The recent appearance of President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Policy Communication, Daniel Bwala, on Al Jazeera’s “Head-to-Head” programme, where he recanted his previous statements, has raised questions about personal integrity, political pragmatism, and credibility in public discourse.
Integrity is frequently associated with consistency. It is not necessarily about never changing one’s mind but about being transparent and accountable when one does. Yet when Daniel Bwala, once a staunch critic of Bola Tinubu, was confronted with past statements in which he harshly criticised Tinubu, he denied ever making such claims. Instead, Bwala explained that his past criticisms were merely political rhetoric that is no longer relevant in his current role defending President Tinubu.
While political pragmatism often requires flexibility, Bwala’s response illustrates that when people speak strongly in condemnation of something or someone, it can sometimes be influenced by personal interest, incomplete information, or the incentives of the moment.
Just as political commentary can shift when critics step into office, narratives in the power sector change when people move from commentary to responsibility.
The complexity of Nigeria’s power sector often humbles confident commentary once responsibility replaces rhetoric. In 1999, when Chief Bola Ige became Minister of Power and Steel under then-President Olusegun Obasanjo, he said, “Power failure will be a thing of the past within six months.” One year later, Ige acknowledged that the structural problems in the power sector were so entrenched that it could take years to fix, if it could be fixed at all.
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Similarly, before Babatunde Fashola was appointed the Minister of Power, he said, ‘Power generation is not rocket science… it is like taking many ‘I better pass my neighbour’ generators and putting them in one place.’ We have darkness because we have incompetent people managing it.”
Shortly after Fashola became Minister of Power, Works and Housing, he started explaining the structural difficulties in Nigeria’s power sector. At one point, he admitted that his past statements underestimated the scale of Nigeria’s power sector challenge.
The reality of Nigeria’s electricity market reveals a far more complex system involving gas supply constraints; generation, transmission limitations, distribution bottlenecks, and persistent market liquidity challenges. Public commentary often focuses on a single component, overlooking the interconnected structure of the electricity market.
For instance, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) recently described the federal government’s proposed payment of over N6 trillion owed to generation companies as a “heist”. In response, the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) challenged the credibility of the NLC to make such claims, arguing that the NLC ignored the technical and financial realities of the market.
The premise of the NLC’s argument is that power generation assets were sold for roughly N400 billion during privatisation, and generation capacity has not increased beyond the pre-privatisation levels.
Meanwhile, according to Atedo Peterside, Chairman of the Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation, Nigeria achieved a peak generation of 4,517 MW on December 23, 2012, while installed capacity stood at 6,976.40 MW as of September 2013. After privatisation, Nigeria achieved an all-time peak generation of 5,801.84 MW in March 2025, while installed capacity has increased to 15,500 MW, more than double the installed capacity before privatisation.
Like political rhetoric, commentary about the power sector often simplifies problems that are far more complex in reality. Complex systems rarely yield to simple narratives. And like Daniel Bwala, those who criticise the government’s power sector interventions for political reasons risk their credibility once they become responsible for managing the very situations they once condemned, as they may face the same complexities and challenges they previously overlooked in their critiques.
