By Taiwo Adisa
Let me first wish all our readers a Happy and prosperous New Year, 2026.
The nature of man as a community-building animal makes communication a necessity. So, for governments, whether at the local, state, or federal levels, communication is not an optional concept. And because communication theorists have told us that every situation communicates, silence cannot be golden, especially in governmental communication. Unfortunately, many government agencies tend to weaponize silence. They think that their sealed lips would keep the people at bay. The impression and perception they end up creating is that of a government that cares less about the welfare, concerns, and aspirations of the people. And that itself can account for the worst of negative perceptions about government.
At a recent engagement he had with some stakeholders, the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, attempted to bridge the communication gap between the government formed by his party in Abuja and the citizens. In attempting to play the role of a salesman, the scholar, however, did not claim to know it all.
I suspect that because he is used to the convergence and divergence of ideas in scholarship, he did not just follow a one-way route. “Where we deserve flowers, please give us our flowers,” the chairman was quoted as saying at different points, as he reeled out some of the achievements of the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He was honest enough to admit there were challenges in some sectors, while he spoke about the things being done to soothe the hurting nerves. As much as Yilwatda tried to bolster the public image of the administration in Abuja, he could not erase the fact that some sore thumbs are sitting pretty like eyesores for the administration.
I will submit that three of such areas stand tall as core public relations challenges for the Tinubu administration. Insecurity is one, then the Works and Transport sector, and then the Power sector. Though public opinion molders would say that these concerns have constituted barriers to the nation’s development for decades, especially Power and Works, the fact remains that progressive solutions are not being found, and the challenges are burgeoning in size. The matter of insecurity has been a concern since the terrorists blew the first improvised device in 2009. Experts would say that the saga is contrived around politics, power, and fundamentalism.
Even though a lot of work has gone into dissecting the challenge and to calm its effects, little progress has been made. The guarantee of the security of lives and property is the primary purpose of government. We have been told that when humans graduated from the Hobbesian state of nature, they resolved to surrender individual might to a central authority to coordinate the coercive capacity of the emerging state. That situation was meant to guarantee that might is no longer right and that the era of survival of the fittest would give way to the operation of the rule of law. Nigerians are, however, hopeful that recent rallies, involving international collaborative efforts between Nigeria and the United States, as well as the promised joint efforts from other global capitals, would yield the desired results in that sector.
Year after year, the Power and Works sectors have continued to provide the biggest Public Relations embarrassments to the Tinubu administration. In 2024, the sector recorded 12 grid collapses, while it also recorded major grid collapses in 2025. Citizens, however, know that even when a grid collapse is not announced, there has been no guarantee of power supply, despite the discriminatory, (call it apartheid) policy initiative of the Minister, Bayo Adelabu, who introduced the BAND system. I do not know how he was able to convince the Federal Government to buy into such a discriminatory policy, which, rather than keeping Discos on their toes to consistently raise the bar in power supply, makes them laidback and nonchalant. I do not know a country that would keep reveling in its inability to provide power for its sprawling population. For most of December 2025, almost all of Oyo State, especially Ibadan, the state capital, was in darkness. The same was reported in most cities and states covered by the Ibadan Disco as well as other Discos across Nigeria. There was no cheering news from different parts of the country until the sector’s managers announced vandalism and grid collapse later in the month. I’ve noticed that in his more than two years in the saddle, Minister Adelabu has yet to come up with a credible solution that would lift the nation’s power sector. But those knowledgeable about that sector have said that it is not something that needs knowledge of rocket science before you can fix power in Nigeria. They have identified some quick fixes, medium-term and long-term. Perhaps the minister is just home to lamentations and romanticizing the challenges rather than seeking credible solutions.
The works sector is the alter ego of the power sector in the absence of performance. And the matter with this sector is there for all to see. When the Minister of Works, Dave Umahi, announced late in December that the problem on the Abuja-Lokoja expressway had been fixed, those who got stranded on the road immediately posted videos on X to affirm their ordeals were far from over. I submitted some time ago on this page that roads across the geopolitical zones are in a terrible state and that they need urgent attention. Those who traveled across the South-West for the chieftaincy programmes involving members of the first family would have seen the decrepit state of the roads they took to Ile-Ife and Oyo town. For many who traveled during the yuletide, they all came back with tales that touch the heart. Whether it is from Maiduguri to Abuja, Abuja to Sokoto, or Lagos to Port Harcourt, stories of bad roads are just commonplace. It looks as if the works minister is only engrossed with the Lagos- Calabar superhighway. While no one would begrudge him and his ministry officials from fixing what they consider a legacy project, existing roads are not supposed to go moribund.
During a debate on the floor of the Senate in mid-December, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who represents Abia South in the Red Chamber, told his colleagues that the Works sector was in shambles and that the development amounted to the marginalization of the South-East zone. He said that with the result posted by Umahi in the Works sector, no one from the zone should vote for the incumbent president come 2027.
Umahi’s response to Senator Abaribe was fast. He stated that Tinubu’s government was working. His riposte: “If we (Ministry of Works) did not have the audacity and courage to bring this moment to the sub-nationals, Governor (Alex) Otti would not be doing what he is doing.” In replying to the Abia South Senator, I thought that the Minister of Works would just pull out his book of achievements to reel out the long list of projects he has completed. I was just disappointed to hear him attempt to claim credit for the achievements of the governor of Abia State, Alex Otti. It is difficult to understand what the minister was saying. In what way do the projects of Abia State give credit to the Federal Government? The two governments run separate budgets, and there are no announcements of joint projects between them. So, why can’t Umahi run on his achievements and allow the governor of Abia State to receive the praise he deserves for his efforts?
Therefore, notwithstanding the flowers we may have to offer the administration in the area of revenue generation, as Yilwatda would want us to acknowledge, the power and works sectors are huge public relations disasters for the Tinubu government. They topped the list of backbenchers in 2024 as they did in 2025. Their failures are easily noticeable because their roles permeate the lives of the people.
But are their failures so irredeemable? As many commentators have noticed, there are low-hanging fruits to jumpstart the different sectors. The power sector could make do with a proper implementation of the Siemens deal, which was midwifed by the administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari. Though there were some murmurings about its implementation among agencies in the sector, with sincerity of purpose, the issues are less Germane. The project promised improved power generation and distribution, but some of the agencies are believed to be cogs in the wheel because the procurements would mostly be done offshore. Apart from that, by addressing problems of inadequate metering and obsolete infrastructure in the sector, the administration would have cut the weight of the challenges by half.
For the Works sector, the ministry cannot continue to insist on executing all public projects with public funds. Why can’t the authorities concession many of the superhighways? We must understand that the capital component of the nation’s budget is meagre and largely unrealisable through the revenue profile. So, the government must resort to borrowing to get infrastructure fixed, and when the government takes loans like the SUKUK, the ministry would insist on applying federal character to the borrowed fund. Instead of devoting a large sum to fixing a particular road at a time. So, you discovered that when the government obtains a N100 billion loan, for instance, to fix, maybe, the Lokoja-Abuja expressway, the ministry would split the money into six equal parts and distribute it to the six geopolitical zones. That is not a productive way of tackling infrastructure. That is why even after several rounds of borrowing, the roads are largely left undone. There is also the question of what went wrong with the Federal Road Maintenance Agency. This agency was once effective, but it has today become a ghost of its old self. If the ailments of FERMA are fixed, the roads may come alive again.
