Let there be light… and there was N17bn solar

DECEMBER 26, 2022, then presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, made voters a solemn promise and entered into a quasi-obligatory contract with them.

At a programme tagged “Business Lunch with Asiwaju,” he said, and I quote verbatim as extracted from the clip of the event, aired by TVC, his television station: “By all means, you (addressing attendees and pitching to his potential voters elsewhere since he would not be everyone’s pick even if he possessed mojo to decree his promise into existence) must have electricity and you will not pay for estimated billing anymore. A promise made will be a promise kept. If I don’t keep the promise and I come back for a second term, don’t vote for me. That is the truth, unless I give you adequate reasons why I couldn’t deliver.”

He went on to win the election, meaning enough Nigerian voters, though under no compulsion to believe him, considering that the voluntarily initiated verbal contract, captured only in digital memory, was in the heat of the 2023 poll when politicians were dropping big fat lies all over the soapbox just to woo the electorate, kept their end of the “deal,” gave him the benefit of the doubt and delivered him. Demonstrable fidelity.

Can the same be said of the president? I doubt, even after billions of public funds had been sunk into the power sector since he took leadership from his party man and predecessor, now late Muhammadu Buhari.

The perceived broken promise to his voters, who are now Nigerians everywhere, has become a viral prop in the hands of the opposition seeking his back next February. But his hecklers may be missing a thing in the self-imposed contract the president would appear to have violated and the self-prescribed consequence he should deserve and suffer.

In contract, there is something called a caveat or contingency. In imposing the contract with Nigeria on himself, he was clever enough to provide a way out if he missed the target. He says in his solemn promise that Nigerians would let him off the hook of rejecting his second-term bid if “I give you adequate reasons why I couldn’t deliver.” So he gave the window to shalaye (street lingo for either one’s side of the story, an innocence plea, or rendering an allocutus). I suspect the last of the three possibilities is the only plausible route for the president to make sense to any sane voter why he should be re-elected on the issue of electricity after bungling so much national latitude and public indulgence; repeatedly raising tariffs on already traumatised Nigerians with almost zero pushback, taking suspicious loans to supposedly shore up the sector, and committing huge commonwealth to the opaque reform being championed by his men in the sector, with only regular national grid collapse and deepening blackouts, even in the most cosmopolitan cities of the country, to show for the fund windfall on the sector.

Someone mused recently that the Bola Tinubu presidency is why Nigeria should never elect octopoidal businessmen as president again. Just like in the energy, media, tax consultancy, hospitality, real estate, maritime, telecommunications, retail, and construction sectors, the president is also allegedly having a pie in the power sector, and the Yoruba will say ta ni esinsin iba gbe bi o se elegbo (the housefly will always back the one with a sore to have a regular feast). The sector and its top players reek, and the president has always known and done nothing ameliorating about it, until the sectoral sleaze almost swallowed his abode in Aso Rock. But he is insured in and by Nigeria’s petrol wealth and can’t be bothered.

The Thursday lamentation of State House Permanent Secretary, Temitope Fashedemi, to federal lawmakers while presenting the 2026 budget proposal to the Senate Committee on Special Duties is all the hypocrisy exhibition voters need not to buy the president’s allocutus when he is ready to explain why the electricity supply he promised “by all means” has remained just an audio promise, three years after taking the reins, even with the Nigerian public cooperating, albeit grudgingly.

From the details of the presentation to the lawmakers (most of the senators are worth the lawmaking nomenclature only in perfidy across the aisle, but today isn’t about them), shared by the presidency, the abode of the president is weeks from being saved from the epileptic national grid and hooked on ready-to-use solar power, which is costing the public N17 billion.

Aja mo omo tire fun lomu o mo todu oya kimo le (dog knows how to breastfeed its puppy but can prey on a pup, greater cane rat offspring), is how the Yoruba race will describe an uncaring fellow, who the Oduduwa clan can also frame as “bamu bamu ni mo yo” (as long as I’m satisfied, let others be damned). In defending the transitioning to renewable energy, the presidential spokesperson conveniently pinpointed America and Trump’s White House; their recent regular go-to when it suits the administration’s agenda. But thankfully, he didn’t say Trump ordered the entire White House pinned on solar. Trump’s official home is still running mostly on America’s national grid with generation capacity of 1,189,492 megawatts as of December 2023. That is about 1.9 billion kilowatts. We should be drawing these parallels and comparative analysis with some modicum of shame.

As an insider and one supposedly leading from the front, President Tinubu is expected to know more than an average Nigerian why his power sector reform has failed woefully, turning what should be a national treasure, a projection of the country’s economic strength and a true marker of renewed hope agenda success—the national grid—into toilet humour. Commonly these days, when there is an outage, the first round of wondering is if it is the national grid again. Who takes such a country seriously? Why won’t Trump reproach it as a disgrace, even while referencing another crumbling sector of our national life—security, or better still, insecurity?

Even if the paralysis in the power sector is forgiven the president and his re-election is given a critical consideration, can he pinpoint another particularly fantastic delivery that has forced a smile out of the hollow cheeks of voters? Even on compassionate ground, it would take ridiculous love for the Nigerian leader for millions of voters to consider punching the ballot for him again next year, for another four years of the expiring four.

I will deliberately heave Minister Adelabu off the blame table because he is just on an errand for his supposed supervisor, who hired him and could have fired him if not satisfied with his delivery. Leaving Adelabu on a job he has been manifestly poor at is an indication of the president finding him impressive, meaning Aso Rock’s number one tenant is either seeing what Nigerians can’t see or the minister is just too dear to him to be put through the grief of firing, electing to make a choice between him and voters the president willingly said should not re-elect him if his “boy” didn’t light up their homes.

Well, his “boy” didn’t light up voters’ homes, he didn’t replace his “boy,” and definitely still expects voters, paying for pitch darkness, to re-elect him. Talk of eating one’s cake and trying to have it.

How could Candidate Tinubu make two promises in a contract and President Tinubu fail on both? Electricity mba (“no” rendered in Igbo language), estimated billing you promised to stop, na im wan consume your domot sef for Villa. Fashedemi, in his Jeremiahic lamentation to the Senate characters, alleged that Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) had not only been gaming the presidential seat of power in billing but even engaging in illicit activity of pushing payment claims for services not rendered. In justifying Aso Rock’s total loss of confidence in Tinubu’s power sector reform and whatever hope of future stability in power supply to Nigerians, Director General of the Energy Commission of Nigeria, Mustapha Abdullahi, argued that Tinubu’s abode running on conventional power (from a national grid now operating on on-and-off liquor licence, the kind local council authorities issue to beer parlours) was financially unsustainable, citing an estimated annual electricity bill of N47 billion.

Did anyone investigate the DisCo’s claim? Is Abdullahi sure the over-bloated billing isn’t a case of over-invoicing by colluding officials on both sides? How can it be so difficult for a well-segregated place to do proper auditing of its expenditure? And these people are meant to be the president’s right-hand men, advising on critical state matters!

At least there was a claimed February 2024 billing reconciliation between Villa and AEDC that brought almost a billion naira bill to about N350 million. The Villa perm. sec. also notified that a few units of generating sets will still be retained in case of emergencies, which isn’t a bad idea, considering the State House as a symbol of Nigeria’s sovereignty and pride. But who is going to be there for Nigerians during their own emergencies, which are daily? Of course, it has been a case of everybody to himself, God for all, though incidentally God considers light (which electricity provides) crucial for all of humanity. It was the first thing He called into existence that He described as “good” during the creation and remodelling of the earth (Genesis 1:2). If light is good, then darkness is, inversely, bad.

The president as his party’s candidate even recognised how bad darkness supply is for the people, especially when they still have to pay for it through estimated billing, for him to say he should not be deserving of a second term if he failed to light up Nigeria in his first four years. Now, what we all feared most has come to be; the president failed and wants to repeat or resit his term. Will Nigerians consider?

But I have a few questions for the president and his Villa dwellers. If AEDC service to the seat of power is considered financially unsustainable, how do they think Nigerians have been surviving these DisCos, which are poorly lit themselves? You buy your transformer and still pay them to install it, and they still tell you it isn’t your property. Prepaid meters, meant to be freely pinned on homes for billing integrity, are being hoarded for either the highest bidders or sustenance of estimated billing fraud. The rip-off is just ghastly and draining. Yet nobody wipes the tears from people’s wailing.

When completely frustrated by zero service and outrageous payment demands, they start shaking ladders while electric officials are on the pole. That should be criminal because it is attempted murder, but locals no longer care. There have been numerous reports and clips of communal gang-ups to manhandle the terrorists, DisCo staff are believed to be.

Imagine AEDC gaming and scamming the presidential villa! What hope do commoners have? Learnt Tunji Bello’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) is trying to pull its weight, but its visibility to Nigerians is still poor. While resorting to self-help is dangerous and unadvised, Nigerians at the mercy of DisCos’ crookedness and without millions of naira for solar power would be excused settling for available solutions.

But there is a need for Nigerians to solve an immediate problem. Their president has broken his own promise; he didn’t fix power supply and sectoral crookedness through estimated billing and affiliate frauds. He was clear from the beginning what the sanction should be. Maybe we listen first to his “adequate reasons” for failing, or we just adopt the solution of Pa Gabriel Igbinedion, who admonished Edo voters in 2003 to see his son’s (Lucky) clearly undeserving re-election as allowing him to repeat a class he failed. Chuckling.