Former Vice President of Nigeria and Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has claimed that the President Bola Tinubu administration has only now embraced an electricity policy direction he advocated more than two decades ago, arguing that the government spent nearly three years worsening Nigeria’s power crisis before arriving at what he described as the right solution.

The claim was contained in a press statement issued on Sunday, July 26, 2026, by Atiku’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, who signed and released the statement on behalf of the former vice president.

Atiku said the recent admission by the Minister of Power that Nigeria could no longer rely solely on large, centralised power plants amounted to “a belated endorsement” of the decentralised electricity generation model he had championed over 20 years ago.

“It should not take a government three years in office to discover what was obvious more than two decades ago,” Atiku said.

He criticised the Tinubu administration for increasing electricity tariffs before carrying out the structural reforms needed to improve power supply.

“A government that thinks before it acts would have fixed the system before asking citizens to pay more. Unfortunately, this administration has done the exact opposite—raising tariffs first and only now beginning to think about the reforms required to justify those increases,” he stated.

The former vice president recalled that during his tenure under former President Olusegun Obasanjo, he consistently advocated decentralising electricity generation by harnessing Nigeria’s diverse energy resources, including hydroelectric dams, solar power, gas and other viable sources.

He disclosed that his disagreement with the…