Insolence flaunts gruesome majesty, like the forepart of the Agbanrere. Even its hindquarters is painful to glimpse – horrid and menacing in its burly immensity.
But while insolence may be forgivable in the rage of an underserved citizenry, it rarely suits the demeanour of a public servant. It becomes a misdemeanour, for instance, when a Minister of Power accuses Nigerians of being wasteful at power consumption, in his frantic bid to justify an outrageous hike in electricity tariff amid epileptic power supply.
To make up for his inability to articulate intelligently, the reasons for the punishing increment, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, resorted to gutter tactics, lambasting the citizenry for indiscriminately leaving their refrigerators and air conditioners on while going out.
Although he could have adopted a less disdainful approach in communicating his views, Adelabu chastised the longsuffering and underserved electricity consumers, whose livelihoods are threatened and their lives destroyed by persistent power outages. No thanks to the managerial ineptitude of successive Ministers of Power.
We relive Adelabu’s rant with a stunned combination of amazement and disgust. Call it his daemonic aria, a flight of feral imagination. If public governance thrives like musical theatre, Adelabu’s recent falsetto could be his cipher, the fault in his organ valve rendering his crafty melody a frantic fustian dross.
It was painful to watch the portly minister blame Nigeria’s electricity problems, in part, on what he described as Nigerians’ wasteful consumption habits.
The minister said this in Abuja, last Friday, while briefing journalists about the recent increase in electricity tariff by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
Adelabu brazenly accused Nigerians of being wasteful at power consumption, blaming this on the country’s electricity affordability.
He said, “A lot of people will come back from work, they want to have dinner, or they want to see their colleagues down the road, they switch on the AC for the room to be cooling before they come back.
“Some people will be going to work in the morning, a freezer that you left on for days, they will still leave it on when all the items in the freezer are frozen and 5, 6, 8 hours of their absence will not make it to defreeze (sic), they will still leave it to be consuming power just because we are not paying enough.
“We have all been overseas before; we know how conscious the power consumers are about electricity consumption.”
If diplomacy is truly the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power, Adelabu undoubtedly needs a trunk full of gloves.
His recent statement is unforgivably gauche and insensitive. His resort to sophistry to justify the extreme increment in the cost of electricity tariff, from the previous rate of N66 per kilowatt (kW) to N225 per kilowatt (kW), is abominable.
Last Wednesday, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approved an increase in electricity tariff for customers under the Band A classifications.
The regulator said customers who receive 20 hours of electricity supply daily will pay N225 per kilowatt (kW) from April 3. The new rate is about triple the previous rate of N66 per kilowatt (kW).
If there is a less insouciant means of communicating the increment and the wisdom behind it to electricity consumers, Adelabu would be oblivious to it.
Thus he resorted to inflammatory speech. Should Adelabu convert public office to a conveyance of disdain towards the masses? Watching him berate electricity consumers is akin to seeing Olohun Iyo disappear to the lure of the proverbial fatal chorus.
The tragedy of his outburst subsists in its brutal contrast between his smirking vanity and the sudden melting of his features beyond recognition. Call it his holocaust and apocalypse.
Prowling at ground zero, Adelabu incinerates on the altar of insensitivity, self-intoxicated in the electric moment before lightning strikes and his mystique reduces to rubble.
Adelabu knows that the outrageous increment of N66 per kilowatt (kW) to N225 per kilowatt (kW) barely addresses the many afflictions of the power sector. Even at that, power stays erratic for consumers categorised on the so-called Band-A divide.
Just recently, the national electricity grid collapsed for the first time in 2024, on Adelabu’s watch, thus hurling Nigeria into complete darkness.
The power generated on the grid slumped, on a Sunday, at about 11:51 am, falling from about 3,852mw at 6 am to as low as 59mw at noon.
The grid managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had 20 power plants completely down, with just Ibom Power online.
That 200 million Nigerians still depend on less than 5,000mw to power their homes and businesses, while the country loses about $29 billion annually (IMF estimates) to power outages should worry Adelabu.
Yet he insists that he speaks the bitter truth, lambasting Nigerians tongue-in-cheek, to excuse his managerial inadequacy.
In reaction to his disdainful remark, not a few Nigerians have taken him to the cleaners, berating him for his insensitivity.
Nonetheless, the grandson of prominent First Republic politician, Adegoke Adelabu, insists he speaks the truth.
He said, “The bitter truth we all need to tell ourselves as Nigerians. A few people are just privileged to sit on the high table. We’re on the same level, we must be able to tell the truth to ourselves.”
In the spirit of truth-telling, Nigerians may also tell Adelabu that he is yet to assert the brilliance and ingenuity anticipated from a Nigerian Minister of Power.
His ‘bitter truth’ fails the test of integrity and empathetic statesmanship. His conduct was a great disservice to the efforts of President Bola Tinubu to present governance with a human face.
If there was any wisdom in Adelabu’s rant, it probably got buried in his snarl of spittle and disregard for the citizenry and electricity consumers whose interests he was appointed to protect and serve, among other responsibilities.
Adelabu, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in charge of operations, resigned from the CBN to contest unsuccessfully the 2019 governorship election in Oyo State.
He reportedly led the finance team on the CBN re-engineering and corporate renewal project and later left the firm in 2000 as an Audit Manager and Senior Consultant to join First Atlantic Bank as the Financial Controller and Group Head of Risk Management and Controls.
Adelabu has also held various other positions while in First Atlantic Bank, including the Chief Inspector of the Bank (2002) and Group Head of National Public Sector Business (2003).
Upon assuming his new office, he assured that the federal government would empower Nigerians through stable and accessible electricity. To achieve the feat, he said the ministry would leverage the Nigerian Electricity Act 2023 to boost power supply in the country.
For a man who flaunts such an impressive trajectory, his recent tirade against electricity consumers leaves too much to be desired.
His acerbic chant seeks to divert attention from the policy lapses, institutional corruption, technical limitations, regulatory failure, and his administrative ineptitude at according those issues the relentless exercise of the mind and will required to resolve them.
Adelabu should attempt humility for a change. He could start by picturing himself as an iced fish seller, a tailor or a steel fabricator whose livelihood is dependent on a stable power supply; would he still affect the venom he displays to rationalise the unjustifiable billing, on his watch, amid epileptic power supply?
Would he still submit to power and its infernal seductions?
