Kemi Badenoch, who leads Britain's Conservative Party, says Nigeria squandered its oil wealth on poor governance. She made the remarks during an interview with The Spectator recently.
Nigeria is an oil producer that has never managed reliable electricity supply, Badenoch noted. According to her, the country's decades of power crisis stem from flawed government policies, not resource scarcity.
"It is very easy to have resources under the ground, but stupid public policy means that you can't use them," she told the magazine. Badenoch grew up in Nigeria before relocating to the UK.
Her comments reflect Nigeria's ongoing electricity struggles years after privatizing the power sector. Current generation capacity sits between 3,500 and 5,000 megawatts for over 250 million citizens.
President Bola Tinubu promised during his Democracy Day address to fix the power sector's problems. He didn't specify how soon the improvements would arrive.
Energy experts have long blamed policy failures for Nigeria's power deficit. Experts say proper investment and management could transform the sector dramatically.
