Joseph Tegbe’s Panic Response to Power Sector Reform

By Adeola Akinremi

In Ayn Rand’s mystery story, the Atlas Shrugged, there is something Nigeria’s Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, can absorb: reason.

Rand’s 1957 book remains valuable and useful outside the world of her fiction. She argues that reason is helpful for everyone. It is not only needed by a theoretical scientist in his laboratory, but by all of us, at all times. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged are thinkers. They demonstrate an ongoing commitment to understanding their work, themselves and the world around them. They choose their goals and values through thought, never putting their desires above the facts.

That is a useful standard for anyone running a government ministry. Because the government is where good intentions can become expensive.

Tegbe recently announced that his office is working on a call centre where electricity complaints from across Nigeria can be lodged and resolved. He also said the initiative would provide “sustainable job opportunities” for young Nigerians nationwide.  

For a minister that needs to roll off his shirt, Tegbe’s policy statement on electricity seems to me one from a man being handed the wheel of a ship in a storm and then being told that the engine room was already flooding: he’s bemused and bewildered.

But Tegbe can prove he led advisory services at KPMG and worked for fortune 500 companies by using measured policy statements.

Let me say up front that the power sector in Nigeria is like a convulsing child that requires a herbal doctor with clairvoyance eyes.

It is unclear how Tegbe was thinking but the setting mattered. Perhaps speaking to university students made the promise of jobs feel more important than the harder question of whether the institution being proposed is actually necessary. But electricity policy cannot be built around applause. It has to be built around facts.

And the first fact is that Nigeria already has a system for electricity complaints. The regulatory framework is not silent on this. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission says a customer’s first point of contact is the Customer Complaints Unit of the Distribution Company serving that customer. Under regulation 43 of the Customer Protection Regulations 2023, the DisCo is expected to resolve the complaint within 15 working days, depending on the complexity of the matter. If the customer is dissatisfied or the complaint is delayed or not resolved, it can be escalated to the NERC Consumer Forum and then to NERC.  

For complaints involving meter accuracy or bill reconciliation, the resolution period is one billing cycle, normally one month.

If the complaint cannot be resolved within the initial 15 days, the DisCo must notify the customer in writing, give reasons, and request an extension of no more than another 15 days, except where the nature of the matter, such as construction work, requires longer. So, in practical terms, a DisCo cannot simply receive a customer’s formal complaint and leave the customer waiting indefinitely without explanation.

All Tegbe needs to do is to make the law work for the consumers. He doesn’t need to convert his office to the ministry of “call centres”. That’s poor economics.  

It appears Tegbe set aside his KPMG and management consulting discipline when making that statement. He failed to align his goals through rigorous thought, placing political desire above operational reality. The proposed economic model simply runs counter to the realities of capital expenditure.

 So the question for Tegbe is not whether Nigerians need somewhere to complain. They already have one.

The real questions are why the existing regulatory system is failing to perform, and what a new federal call centre could possibly achieve that established statutory bodies cannot

Ideally, a call centre that makes it easier for citizens to navigate the existing system could be useful. I’d also argue that a national number that receives a complaint, assigns a case number and automatically routes it to the responsible utility or regulator could improve access.

But that is very different from creating another government structure to perform a function that already sits inside the electricity regulatory architecture.

The danger is that the government creates another layer between the citizens and the institution that is legally responsible for solving the problem. That is not a reform. It is the opposite. All in all, it can simply be bureaucracy with a new national hotline or telephone number for consumer complaints.

There is an even more important problem with the proposal. Nigeria’s electricity regulatory structure is becoming more decentralized, not more centralized. NERC announced in May that 15 states had assumed control of their electricity markets and that consumers in those states should now take complaints to their respective state electricity regulators.

That means a new national call centre would have to explain its place in an increasingly complex regulatory system. Who owns the complaint? Who is legally responsible for resolving it? What happens when the statutory deadline expires?

There is also a useful irony in Tegbe’s announcement. He said the proposed call centre would create “sustainable job opportunities for our youth nationwide.” Will this employment be contractual or within the federal civil service?  Either way, the power minister is offering no solution. He appears to me to be prioritizing politics over real benefits of access to reliable electricity. Actually, Nigerians are tired of complaint centres. They are very loud about what they want: comfort.

As it is, Nigeria does not need the government to manufacture jobs by expanding its administrative footprint. Nigeria needs the government to create the conditions under which businesses can create jobs themselves.

A functioning electricity market would allow manufacturers to spend less on diesel and generators. It would allow small businesses to devote more of their revenue to expansion rather than alternative power. That is how electricity policy becomes employment policy.

By connecting millions more people to reliable, affordable power, Tegbe can unlock wider benefits across healthcare, education, security, manufacturing and so much. He doesn’t need to add “call centre” to his portfolio.

Of course, electricity access alone is insufficient; power must be reliable, affordable, and continuous to yield long-term social impact. The World Bank is clear in its verdict on Nigeria’s power sector. It says power deficit is a primary bottleneck to Nigerian productivity, emphasizing the urgent need to close the metering gap and enforce strict regulatory sanctions against non-performing DisCos.

Those are the structural challenges that demand the minister’s full attention, not the creation of a national call centre.

Adeola Akinremi is a public policy advisor, strategic communications expert, and the founder and CEO of Hintells, an AI-powered intelligence platform serving businesses and diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. He has extensive multilateral experience advising on governance, economic and policy reforms across global markets and can be reached at: adeola@hintells.com