African News
Was there a power outage at the National Assembly during Minister’s visit?
An online blog, instablog9ja, @ instablog, posted that there was a power outage at the national assembly when the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, was in the Senate chamber for a public hearing.
The claim is TRUE.
Adelabu was in Abuja on Monday, 29th April 2024 at a one-day investigative hearing on stopping the new electricity tariff increase by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission from onward implementation by the Distribution Companies.
During the panel, he said the Federal Government requires 10 billion US dollars annually for the next ten years to revive the nation’s power sector and end the liquidity challenge.
A day after his visit, on 30thApril 2024, an online blog, instablog9ja posted a picture of the minister with the headline: “Power reportedly going off at the National Assembly, while the minister of power was in the building.”
The post garnered 1.9 million views, 4,918 reposts, 1,205 quotes, and over 30,000 likes.
In the comment section, an X user, Owokodu-Idris(@ajelvy-oia), said,
“Was that a sabotage or coincidence? National Assembly should be running on generators or inverters during sessions with that kind of budget they have year in and out!”
Desire (@tife-desire) wrote, “Nah minister order boys to turn off the light…National assembly no pay for B and A.”
It was observed that the mainstream media such as,Punch and Leadership newspapers also reported the story. It was reported that the power outage lasted for about five minutes.
According to Punch Newspaper, MrAdelabu was answering questions from senators at an investigative hearing on “the need to halt the increase in the price of electricity” organised by the Senate Committee on Power when the power went off.
CONCLUSION
Available evidence reveals that there was a power outage while the minister was in the building, although it only lasted five minutes, therefore the claim is TRUE.