Adelabu's empty national blackout threat

Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu

When Adebayo AbdulWaheed Adelabu said before the Senate Committee's one day investigation into the recent tariff hike of the power minister and issued his threat that except the Senate supports his tarrif increase and all Nigerians bow to his scheme, the nation will be thrown into total blackout within the next three months, the Committee Chairman, Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe was little impressed. So was another member of the Committee, Simon Bako Lalong who had been governor of Plateau State for eight years. Adelabu hinged his threat on his thinking that except there be tarrif hike investors will not come into the power sector and it will collapse. For Senator Eyinnaya Abaribe who very well know that Nigeria has always been in blackout since before independence and till now, the threat of blackout means nothing to Nigerians who have never known what is called light except they read it in the Bible where God commanded light to be. That command of God has never been obeyed by leaders in Nigeria. They could have as well live the rest of their years in total darkness. With the latest miracle of Professor Bath Nnaji who single- handedly through a private effort floated a power company that is now providing a twenty four-hour-round-the clock power to nine local governments in his state of Abia, the information of the Power minister, Adelabu that investors will not come into the sector without another round of stifling tarrif hike cannot be true.

Simon Lalong had been minister in Tinubu's cabinet and a member of the ruling APC, Adelabu may not know the truth of blackout in Nigeria. In Lalong's Plateau State only the state capital, Jos has some form of relatively steady electricity supply. Other parts of the state only have one hour or so supply for just one day in a week and that is supplied by NESCO built by Europeans to supply tin miners in Jos but now used to give electricity to the toubled city. And so what does the threat of total blackout mean to a people such as the hapless citizens of Plateau who have always been in darkness; so Adelabu’s empty threats are meaningless. But Adelabu seemed to make his threat good. As he spoke to the Committee, electricity supply to the Senate was interrupted.

Some watchers think it was the handiwork of enemies of the power minister to get the Senate angry with him, other commentators on WhatsApp think it was a measure of the incompetence of the minister who had done nothing since he assumed the post than to harass and talk down on Nigerians who put Tinubu his boss in office. They want him removed saying except Tinubu does not want to do a good job at the power ministry, he must remove Adebayo Adelabu immediately. Adebayo was not the immediate choice of the president, at least as publicly felt. The choice was Nasir El-Rufai, a well known bulldozer with great ability to bulldoze his way through any impediment. But allegedly Tinubu could not contain an El Rufai in his cabinet and so he schemed El Rufai out by a petition caused to be written and submitted by a senator during the Senate screening of El Rufai. The scheme worked as 'big' El Rufai was humiliated and with anger refused the job. Tinubu substituted Adelabu with no known capacity for a complex job as the troublesome power sector in Nigeria. By that incidence, El Rufai was exposed as a great religious bigot in the nation. El Rufai with a first class degree in Quantity Surveying had always touted himself as a unifier in the nation and one who freely mix among the two major religions in Nigeria. He frequents the Church of his friend, Tunde Bakare, Citadel Global Community Church, CGCC, where he once preached although he is a Muslim. He preached, yes because he mounted the podium at the Church, and spoke to the Church on politics in Nigeria. He told them that while many Christians are tongue talking, they still steal in there various offices and even rig elections. He sold himself that day as a reformer. But nobody in that congregation could have imagined they were listening to a deceiver who would later jettison his friend Bakare and pick a Tinubu despite his Muslim/ Muslim ticket just because another Islamists, Professor Isaq Akintola, a retired Lagos State University teacher of comparative religion advised him to pick Tinubu so that the Yoruba Muslims will have a sense of belonging among the Yoruba. Bakare contested the APC primary for the presidential candidate where Tinubu won with Bakare getting no vote, yet El Rufai voted.

Adelabu's interest is in the governorship of Oyo State from where he hails. In 2019 at the end of the second term of late Isaq Ajimobi, Adelabu did everything to be successor to Ajimobi. He announced Ajimobi, who was embroiled in controversy with the then Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Adetunji, as his father. That did not help his ambition. He allegedly smuggled an addition to his name. Before that time he was simply Adebayo Adelabu but suddenly became AbdulWaheed Adelabu. Oyo State and Ibadan especially is Muslim dominated and allegedly at the suggestion of Ajimobi he reconverted to Islam. He had been a Christian convert before this time as alleged. Since Adelabu became the power minister, he has at least once punctuated his press conference with "Insha Allah" in the name of Allah. Adelabu seem to always be in need of a father. At the Oyo governorship of 2019, he unfortunately lost to Seyi Makinde another Muslim who converted to Christianity. And Ajimobi's fatherhood to Adelabu did no magic, neither did Adelabu's reconversion to Islam help.

Today, back to the APC from which Teslim Folarin, the 2023 govership candidate of APC drove him into Accord party and away from Ibadan, Adelabu is again clinging to Tinubu as his 'father.' According to an allegation that runs in the mill in Ibadan, Adelabu's penchant for fatherhood may have to do with his paternal background with some psychological undertones. Adelabu loves to leverage on the generalissimo of Ibadan politics in the pre-independence days, Alhaji Adegoke Adelabu who was widely known as 'penkelemesi' which Adebayo Adelabu, the power minister has adopted as his political sobriquet. Adegoke Adelabu, the patriarch of the Adelabu family was so named by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, legendary of Nigeria's politics. Awolowo had asked a prominent Benin Oba who was a member of the Western Regional legislature to ignore Adelabu's 'peculiar mess' because Adelabu had insulted the exalted Oba of Benin and the Oba had threatened to stop coming to the parliament at Ibadan, the western regional capital. The illiterate Ibadan women known for a penchant for fashioning out political songs from any conceivable controversy coined a song from that, "Adelabu penkelemesi." Adebayo Adelabu had been working seriously to let that hang on his politics but for a number reasons it has not worked. One is that the people of Ibadan have almost forgotten everything about Adegoke Adelabu his supposed grandfather, allegedly. Again some rumors are gaining ground that Adebayo couldn't have been the the grandson of Adegoke Adelabu; that Adegoke Adelabu who died in September 1958 did not have an adult son by the time he died who could have fathered the 55 year old Adebayo Adelabu. The rumor mill, yet unconfirmed is that Adebayo is connected to the Adelabu family by his mother. Yet Adebayo Adelabu continue to eye the coveted Oyo governorship. The greatest threat to that ambition may be his ongoing misperformance as power minister.

When he came to Ibadan to commission some power projects in Oyo State and used the opportunity to visit Oyo State, he told Seyi Makinde, the governor of the state that he had not come for politics but to commission power projects and as the representative of the state in the federal cabinet. But at the Adelabu compound and the entire Oke Odo community which surrounds it, Adebayo Adelabu supplied solar street lights to many labyrinths in the area. I told people who were celebrating him as the next governor of Oyo State that what the power minister was saying was that he would not be successful in his power job and that they had better be content with solar-powered street lights. I think I'm being proved right by the misperformance of the minister one year after. Adebayo does not seem ready for any good job. In this he is already hurting his ambition to be governor. Most people in his Oke Odo community where electricity has not blinked for months are swearing that he will never be governor in Oyo State.

Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos