By Clement Olumba
“When a man decides to publicly show off his dance steps, he must be ready to accept unfavorable comments.”
It is no longer news that the Nigerian nation has continued to wallow in darkness forced upon her due to inadequate electricity power supply. Decade after decade the story remains the same and the people go by as if all is well, without even a frown. The power situation in our dear country has simply become a huge joke. Let’s go back to the beginning of this current democratic practice which began in 1999, after the death of the last military dictator General Sanni Abacha whose stay at the helm of government lasted for five years (1993-1998).The joy of the country’s return to democracy after long years of military dictatorship was expectedly resounding, with many naively believing that the nation was finally set to begin it’s journey towards fulfilling the long held belief of a potential economic powerhouse and indeed an industrial giant.
Then President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo made Power one of his priorities and appointed as his minister of power, the late legal and political sage, Chief Bola Ige who was fondly referred to as the Cesaro, a man who could speak, read and write in Latin. Ige after his appointment, promised Nigerians that he would turn things around in the power sector. However, he soon found out that talk is cheap and was later redeployed to the ministry of justice and also became the Attorney General of the Federation. In all the Obasanjo administration was reported to have spent $16 billion dollars on power between 1999 and 2007, although Obasanjo has continually denied the figure. Then came Goodluck Jonathan who took the reigns of office following the death of Umar Musa Yar’Adua, he equally committed huge funds to improve power and yet nothing significant was recorded. Buhari came and got eight years incredible sums were borrowed to enhance power generation, however as before the results remained the same. We have continued in this avoidable situation with our power generation due to corruption and insincerity of successive leadership to effectively deal with and put an end to the needless constant blackout in the country.
The fraud within the sector as with several other sectors to say the least is mind bugging. For how long will a country of over 200 million people plus population continue to manage a meager energy generation of 3,0000 megawatts of electricity? At other times it drops down to 1,000 MW. At a time when countries within Africa (not even Europe nor America) are generating 40,000 to 50,000 megawatts of power, our dear country is still shamelessly but gleefully talking about increasing the nation’s power generation from 3,000 to 4,000MW when its already common knowledge that we operate with less. Enter Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu with a campaign promise to Nigerians that he would ensure they enjoy steady, uninterrupted power and every subscriber properly metered adding for good measure a very strong caveat “if I don’t give you light when I comes back don’t vote for me; because a promise made is a promise kept”. This was before the 2023 presidential election, fast forward to April 2026, three years in office as the president, nothing has changed instead the situation is worse. A failed promise by all standards.
To make matters worse the man he placed in charge of the ministry of power Chief Adebayo Adelabu a little over a week ago while giving reasons for the present situation and apologized for their failure, made a bold promise to Nigerians that in the next weeks there will be power. What they take Nigerians for I simply can’t fathom, because what the government has failed to do in three years of its administration, Adelabu has said it would do in two weeks. The Minister might after all have some mystical powers we don’t know about or else it might be assumed that the government knew what to do all along but chose to wait until this time to act. Barring the above suspicions it makes absolutely no sense to believe his pronouncement. If the minister fails to deliver on his promise to make electricity available to the citizens in two weeks, he should immediately resign and save himself any little honour he might have left, while Nigerians will wait for his principal at the 2027 presidential polls. Nigeria must not continue to join Tinubu and Adelabu in this human imposed dance with darkness.
