Power talk and power supply

IN 2025, power will be on the menu more than it was in 2024. It will be more talked about than it has been since the 2023 elections. Power was among the topics that featured in this column at the beginning of the year. It was not political power, it was electricity power and the issues around it. Political power is already gaining currency and the issue of who gets what and when in the coming political dispensation will come to the front burner in the coming months and will escalate in 2025.

Before then, the electricity power and the Minister of Power are on the cards. Precisely on January 27, this column covered “That Adelabu’s power talk in Ibadan”. It was a discussion of the chaotic electricity power supply situation in the home city of the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, in January 2024. It was a look at the things Adebayo Adelabu known more as Penkelemesi, spoke about when he came visiting some of the power installations in Ibadan, Oyo State and the city’s power supply jurisdiction. It was a call for an actual improvement of power supply beyond verbal assurances of what the government was planning to do.

Power supply in Ibadan and indeed Nigeria was a popular discussion in January. It was about the topic all over the radio stations in Ibadan as it appeared like the item a general to-do list. The common refrain among the numerous callers into such radio programmes was “we don’t have light in our area” and “please do something about electricity power supply to so and so community or area.”

On January 27, this column said: “Bayo Adelabu is now a federal commodity but he must have heard from home what has become of electricity power supply in Ibadan since the beginning of this year. He must have been told, if he had not heard by himself, that the supply of the commodity had grown far worse in more parts of the city than the previous years. Those previous years included the years of Buhari which many agree were the darkest in the annals of our nascent democratic experience. His visit to power installations in Ibadan nay Oyo State and to the almighty Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC), amounts to nothing if power supply is not improved. It is not going to get simpler than that in any way.”

In December 2024, Minister Adebayo Adelabu was in Ibadan once again. Unlike what informed the January visit, the Minister was in town as a guest of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Oyo State Council. This time round, he came to deliver the Oyo NUJ 2024 Press Week lecture. He discussed power generation, transmission and distribution as the main topic. That is the job given him by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the moment.

It appeared that the Oyo NUJ 2024 Press Week lecture was a great time and an ample opportunity for the minister to look back and take stock. Adelabu might have seen so much from January to December to forget some of the things he said in January. Besides, he was in Ibadan as a guest lecturer of the NUJ and not as the power man on the neck of electricity distribution and power transmission companies. It was a different scenario this time round.

And indeed, there was a difference in the line of discussion in December because the issue was no longer electricity supply to homes in Ibadan. The preponderance of the topics on radio stations is no longer about non-availability of the commodity and also, the public refrain is no longer the usual SOS to electricity distribution companies. That has faded so much.

However, the new talk about power is centred around the national electricity grid. The rate at which the national grid collapses in recent times calls for serious concern. And it did, because that was the area of the power minister’s concentration in his lecture in December. Adelabu said it was the next preoccupation of his ministry, and told of what the ministry was doing about incessant power grid collapse in Nigeria.

“We are working with the World Bank to ensure full deployment of our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which, once operational, will help in addressing the frequent grid collapses experienced in the sector. Digital tools facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, into the grid, advancing Nigeria’s energy transition goals.

“Digital platforms also support micro-grid solutions, making electricity more accessible in rural and underserved areas. Furthermore, digital innovation supports investment and planning through data-driven insights.

“Additionally, digital platforms for grid monitoring and management have revolutionized system operations. Advanced SCADA systems and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enable operators to monitor and address grid performance issues in real time. This has reduced outages and improved response times to system failures.”

While Adelabu is counting the gains, he is also counting on the support of various partners to drive the power sector to the desired destination. The technicalities and the power registers do not concern the end user and the ordinary Nigerian. What they are after, as noted in the January column, is to turn their switches and get their light on for their various purposes.

Electricity power supply is not so much of an issue to a certain section of the Nigerian people right now as the control of political power. These sections of Nigeria are juggling their brains, and are deploying subtle means to see what would happen beginning from 2025, not with what Adelabu is doing but with what his employer is up to. Adelabu is just doing his job as the Minister of Power. The kind of power which Adelabu is operating on is nothing compared to the power needed to sustain the marriage that brought the administration that employed him to power.

Indeed, 2025 would, like the gourd show many of us who are watching proceedings from a distance where the rope would fit. The gourd rightly prescribes the place of the rope on it, and this is a fitting metaphor for where the power play would lead the citizenry in the coming months. So as the game heightens, and the gourd grows, we would see where the rope would fit—whether it would be on the neck of the gourd or in any other place, which might be awkward.

Meanwhile, as the marriage between the two political strange bedfellows grows in tension and power play, we would take to the advice of Tolstoy: “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.” We await what power supply would look like in 2025 and what power play we would contend with.

READ ALSO: Tinubu’s policies: Many states now enjoy 22 hours daily power supply — Yul Edochie