The Chief Technical Adviser to the Minister of Power, Adebayo Olowoniyi, has assured Nigerians that electricity supply will begin to improve in the coming days, with full restoration expected within two weeks.
Olowoniyi gave the assurance on Thursday, March 26, 2026, during an appearance on Arise TV, shortly after the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, apologised to Nigerians over the persistent outages affecting homes, businesses, schools and industries nationwide.
Defending the minister’s apology, Olowoniyi described it as a demonstration of leadership rather than an admission of fault.
“I think, first of all, I’d like to start with the apology from the Honourable Minister, which we believe is all about taking leadership in the sector,” he said.
“Not necessarily directly his fault for the challenges that we have, but as the Minister of Power, he took the right leadership step to assume responsibility and ensure solutions are implemented quickly.”
He explained that the recent power challenges were largely caused by disruptions to a major gas pipeline supplying fuel to power plants, noting that about 75 per cent of Nigeria’s electricity generation depends on gas.
According to him, the maintenance work on the pipeline is nearing completion, and gas supply is gradually being restored.
“One of the major gas pipelines in Nigeria was undergoing maintenance, and that process is almost complete. Within the next two weeks, full gas pressure will be restored, enabling power plants to return to their previous levels of generation,” he said.
Olowoniyi added that early signs of improvement are already being observed.
“From Wednesday, March 25, 2026, we began to see gradual improvement as pressure builds on the pipeline, and this will continue steadily over the next couple of weeks,” he noted.
The assurance follows Adelabu’s earlier apology on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Abuja, where he attributed the outages to factors beyond immediate government control but maintained that the situation would stabilise within two weeks.
The minister also reiterated the Federal Government’s target of increasing electricity generation to 6,000 megawatts before the end of 2026, describing the current disruption as a temporary setback.
Nigeria’s power sector has long faced challenges including inadequate gas supply, ageing infrastructure, transmission constraints and liquidity issues across the value chain.
