My town has been without electricity for 12 years —Olu of Igbokoda

The traditional ruler of Igbokoda community in Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, Oba Odidiomo Afolabi Oladimeji Ilarada I, Olu of Igbokoda, speaks with SAM NWAOKO on the traditional institution in Nigeria, his community’s power outage for over 12 years and what the affected communities are doing to get out of the problem.

 

You had to leave what you were doing in the United Kingdom to return to Igbokoda to rule over your people as their king. Looking back, are there any regrets of this action and what are they?

I realised that the traditional institution has been reduced to nothing by the political class and their machinations. Our people now see politicians as the source of everything and thereby reducing the traditional institution to nothing as it were. With all my education and experience, just sitting in the palace doing nothing makes me feel basically unfulfilled. In today’s traditional setup, the constitution does not assign any role to traditional rulers. There is no law at all talking about the traditional institution apart from the various chief laws, and those laws are only about who can be a king, how to be a king and how the government can give you instrument of office. That is all. Even if I take up certain responsibilities in my kingdom, a local government Chairman might come up and say ‘you know what? This thing you are trying to do is in my sphere of authority and therefore, you cannot go there’. And he might be right because the law created the local government and gave them responsibilities.

 

In that case, what are those things you think could be done to reverse some of these things?

There are those that have said that the constitution should create roles for traditional rulers; I also want to agree to that in some ways. I agree because it is contradictory of the politicians who would say ‘you are traditional rulers, you should be non-partisan’. But when it is time for elections, they will run to you and say ‘Kabiyesi, endorse us, support us’ and all that. They seek your endorsement because they know that once you say it, your people are likely to follow you. So there should be things that are created, designed for kings to do. In those days, there were times when kings were governors-general, members of the House of Reps and all that. That period did not reduce traditional rulers in any manner. Rather, it enhances their position.

 

There are two sides to a coin, and you have stated the side that you are not at home with. Which ones would you say are the positives, the areas that traditional institutions are doing well and are worth strengthening?

Today, the real people who are saddled with security in their areas mostly are the traditional rulers. A lot of people give him information. I am of the opinion that security agencies and government should empower and strengthen traditional rulers in terms of providing better security within their areas. If every kingdom is made to secure its jurisdiction, by extension, the state is secured and by extension, the country will be more secured. But in a situation where politicians take all policemen with them, the security of the people is jeopardised. As at today, I have seen that the work of the traditional rulers in providing adequate security has been under-recognised. But to be honest, they are doing a good job.

 

Your Majesty, a quick assessment would place you among activists, more than traditional rulers. Does this come from your background in activism and students’ unionism?

I don’t know how activists talk. I think I am just saying what I think ought to be and what I feel should be. Yes, from my record, I know I was a students’ union leader; I was the Public Relations Officer of the Ife Students’ Union; I was PRO of NANS, I was involved in pro-democracy activities and all that. In this country, when you do not follow the usual pattern of reasoning, you are labelled an ‘activist’. There is no way we can continue with the usual pattern and bring our country out of the doldrums where it is; we must be able to think differently. When we started saying that military regime was an abnormality, people labelled us as ‘activists’. But today, those who were sleeping and who were calling us ‘noisemakers’ are the people that are benefitting from the struggle for the democracy today. I know people in the chambers of Chief Gani Fawehinmi who called some of us “no future ambition” (NFAs), they are the people in government today, they are ministers and so on. We have no regrets, what we were doing was for the country, not for individual gain.

 

It took some time to convince you to leave the United Kingdom to return home to rule over your people in Igbokoda. Does this form part of your outlook towards things as they are in the country and in your domain?

I refused to come because I know that traditional institution in Nigeria has been debased. It is no more what it used to be. That was the first reason. Secondly, looking at my background and where I was coming from, I saw kingship as a bourgeoisie thing, a setting to oppress people, a setting of some class creation and I was not prepared for that. But when I realised that I had no choice, I said ‘okay, let me take it as a call to serve’. I don’t want to serve my people through politics because I have seen some people that joined politics and today, it is either they have been messed up or they have become part of the system. People come up with the idea that if you cannot beat them, you join them; or if you are not in the system, you cannot understand it to bring about a change. I disagree. But if my people are calling me to come and serve, let me try this one so that it won’t look like you are just there pontificating. Come and put into practice some of the things you believe in. However, I have realised that I chose the wrong place to think of serving my people. Yes, I was very reluctant to come and join them. But then, it’s okay.

 

You’ve been on the throne for nearly eight years and in all those years there has not been public power supply to your community and some others. How much of your activism have you tried to put forward to be able to bring about changes in this regard?

It is true. Before I got to the throne, there had been no electricity for four years. Four plus the eight that I have spent on the throne, that is 12 years. There are a lot of things at play which made people not to have electricity. In those days, they said it was NEPA or PHCN which were still government agencies; and corruption in our system was the bane of those agencies. The money that ought to have gone into buying transformers and so on went into private pockets. It was that general sickness of stealing that by public officials that denied the people electricity then. But from the day it was sold to private hands, there was a little difference. I am not saying there was no corruption in BEDC or the distribution company (DISCOs) but then, it was the corruption of the people within the companies that caused the problem.

 

So, the corruption in the system at the old and new companies is what has left your people without electricity for over 12 years?

It is corruption, because the DISCOs are milking the people, collecting money from the people even for energy they did not supply. How do they do it? They come up with an assumption of what you consumed, so they just come up with a ridiculous bill and nobody will come up with a refund if you are over-billed. Another thing is that there would be electricity in the transformer in certain areas but they will not give it to the towns that need it. Yet they will come up with stories like, ‘you have electricity in your area that needs to be paid for’. In it all, it is the final consumer that bears the burden.

For instance in my area, the DISCO realised that a lot of the equipments were bad and they were not prepared to give some areas electricity because they do not have enough energy to give to everybody. So they concentrate on the cities. In Ondo State, they wouldn’t want anything that would make Akure not to have electricity because that would expose them to the whole world that they are bad. They wouldn’t want anything that will stop Ondo from having electricity or Owo from having electricity. Ikare and all those areas are closer to Osogbo. But in the South, we are far away, do not have anybody in government and it is also not within the axis of popular journeys where people go to regularly. So what they do is that, if the whole of Ondo State would need let’s say 100 Mega Watts of electricity, they will take 20. TCN has enough electricity to give to them, but instead of taking 100 they would take 20. That 20 they will ration among Ondo, Owo and Akure.

For the whole of Okitipupa axis, they said we need about 24MW of electricity, but BEDC is taking only 6MW. BEDC had given Ode Aye electricity since December 2018, but it is in the transformer but not in the town. Ode Aye had no electricity at all for many years. But go to the records of BEDC, they would say Ode Aye and Igbokoda have electricity but this is not true. In actual fact, because they are not prepared to give electricity to those areas, what they do now is to send people to go to the transformers to destroy the transformers. They would say ‘we would have given you the electricity but your people have vandalised the transformer.’ How I got to know is that there is a sub-station in Igbokoda. Somebody went there, opened a place where they normally put some oil, opened it and the oil just drained. You will notice that that was sabotage, not that they went there to steal. The problem is that BEDC does not have what it takes to give that area electricity.

 

So what’s next?

One of the problems is that most Nigerians don’t know what the law says about electricity transmission and distribution, consumption and so on. The law says no DISCO should disconnect a community from the national grid for more than three months. We have been disconnected for 12 years! The law says if you are disconnected from the national grid for a particular period, you have the right to declare emergency on electricity, and added that if you declare emergency on electricity the community has the right to generate electricity for their own people. After waiting for 12 years, and after all efforts, we have made up our minds that our community will generate our own electricity. If it means using generators to supply electricity to our people, we will because the law allows it.

 

Between TCN and BEDC, you would have learnt a few things. What exactly are the reasons given apart from sabotage and vandalism for not having electricity and why for so long?

When BEDC came on board, the first thing they said was that we owed them some money. We said let the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) come and check and tell us how we are indebted to BEDC. For instance Ilaje, there was crisis between the Ijaw and Ilaje in 1998/1999. From that time there was no electricity for a long period before they took the whole thing away completely 12 years ago. As at that time there was no BEDC. I know that they bought both assets and liabilities, but if PHCN did not cut us off because we owed, you that bought came and cut us off completely because we are owing? We made efforts with BEDC and asked that we be given electricity and meters before the NERC resolves the issue of debt. Give us prepaid meters and from the recharging we would be doing, you can start deducting your money gradually. They refused. We agreed that we would pay and approached the state government for a bailout. But we still wanted the NERC to look into the alleged indebtedness because we know that BEDC was lying. The DISCOs are like judges in their own case; they determine how much you owe without facts of it. But because we are helpless and nowhere to turn to, we said okay, we will pay but give us meters so that each household would pay with some level of ease. BEDC refused. We approached the state government and they agreed to help us pay the alleged debt and asked the BEDC to give us electricity, but the BEDC turned around to say that all the poles and cables are bad, they need to be repaired as well as new transformers because of new housing development. The Niger Delta Development Company (NDDC) came to our aid; repaired the old ones and did all that the BEDC asked. Then BEDC said there were no prepaid meters or any meter at all and that what they would do is give us bulk metering from the transformers. About four or five streets would be on a transformer. Your street will recharge at the transformer when the money finishes you go to the transformer to recharge. We asked who would be collecting the money? They said each group using a transformer could form a power committee which members would go round to collect the money. When the NDDC finished repair of the facilities, they said there was a problem with a transformer at Omotosho. We went to Omotosho and were told that there was no problem with any of their equipment. When they saw that my agitation was too high, they went and tampered with the transformers. That was when we learnt that instead of 24MW that was required, BEDC taking only 6MW.

 

What’s the way forward in all of these?

In the whole of Ilaje Local Government, Igbokoda is the only town that you can say has electricity. Yet you came up with a bill of Ilaje owing you millions of Naira. I met with the Managing Director of BEDC, Mrs Osibodu and she told me that they are ready to give electricity to people who can pay. My people are not the poorest in Ondo State. What I found is that she does not have the capacity to give us electricity.

On the way forward, I think I have to address the government here. I am one of those persons who are opposed to the privatisation of some basic things. If you say it is in the hand of government and they are not functioning, who is to blame? It is still the government. Take NEPA for instance, if the agency is not functioning and the workers are your staff, who is responsible for hiring, firing and discipline? It is the government. It is as a result of irresponsible governance that led to the death of PHCN. Selling it has not and will never improve things. The way forward would still be that the government should revoke the licenses of the DISCOs and take the generation, transmission and distribution over. Just as we have GENCO and TCN in the hand of government, why should we leave distribution in the hands of private persons? Let the government allow private persons then to do the generation and buy from them and distribute to us and collect the money. Now the DISCOs are making money out of the people without giving them any electricity. I think first and foremost, government should revoke their licences and take them back for proper management. If government will not do that, then they should allow people to generate their own electricity without issues and sell to their members within the community because even the law establishing DISCOs allows that. The DISCOs will say if you are going to generate your own electricity, you cannot use our national grid. So, it is a cycle, we will just be moving round in a circle.

As far as we are concerned in the South (of Ondo State), we are not going to allow BEDC to bring light to us again. All the kings in our senatorial district have already met and we have decided on what to do. We are going to invoke the law.  Once it works in our own case, we know it would be like a wild fire because others will copy. We need a revolution in the electricity sector. We need a revolution that will break the monopoly of the DISCOs. Unless we do that, we are not going anywhere.

 

So all the communities run on electricity generating sets?

Yes. For eight years in my palace, I have been on generating sets. If I switch on electricity only at night, I spend N3,000 daily on fuelling and that does not include ironing my clothes and refrigeration etc. If I need to do those, I will need a minimum of N6,000 – 8,000 daily and this isn’t including cost or servicing and so on. N3,000 daily per month is about N90,000 per month on fuelling alone. Even if i pay BEDC N10,000 mothly i will still have a better electricity than what I’m currently having.