When I Asked If Any Tribe Enjoys Uninterrupted Power, They Called Me a Bigot – Obi

Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, has commented on Nigeria’s pervasive power crisis, comparing it to South Africa’s recent achievement of seven uninterrupted months of electricity.

He noted that despite years of promises and initiatives, Nigeria still generates only a fraction of South Africa’s power supply, leaving millions of Nigerians to endure blackouts.

South Africa generates about 40,000 MW of electricity, while Nigeria struggles with just 10% of that, Obi posted.

Obi’s comment came after reports that Nigeria’s national grid collapsed yesterday, plunging the country into darkness at around 2:35 p.m. The latest outage marks the tenth grid collapse this year and comes barely two weeks after the previous incident on October 19, which triggered widespread power outages.

Obi explained that questions about whether certain regions or groups receive preferential treatment are often dismissed as tribal or religious bias.

And when I ask the question: is there any tribe in Nigeria that enjoys uninterrupted power supply like South Africa? I am labelled a tribal bigot. When I ask if any religion enjoys special privileges in this crisis, I am called a religious bigot. But I will continue to speak the truth about our situation today.

However, he insists that his criticism is not aimed at any tribe or religion but is a call for transformative leadership that addresses issues impacting all Nigerians equally.

Obi urged Nigerians to set aside ethnic and religious sentiments, calling for the election of competent, visionary leaders committed to investing in critical sectors such as power, health, and education. He stressed that such a focus is essential to lift Nigeria out of poverty and secure its position as a productive nation.

The fact remains that we are all suffering equally from this failure. The solution lies not in tribal or religious affiliations but in visionary leadership and a shared commitment to progress, Obi emphasised.

We must set aside these primordial sentiments and elect leaders who are competent, capable, and have the vision to transform our nation from a consumer-driven economy to a productive one by investing our meager resources in critical areas of development like health and education, lifting our people out of poverty, and ensuring increased electricity production and distribution.

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Oluwasegun Sanusi

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