By Suyi Ayodele

Yoruba people have the right description for every concept and idea. They have the concept of Ìwòfà àdáwó jo yá (jointly owned pawn). With this saying, they bemoan the abject fate of anything that is jointly owned. They take this further by asserting that a publicly owned Ìwòfà must always look unkempt, his head bushy, his life unwell.

The Daily Times was founded on June 6, 1925, by Richard Barrow, Adeyemo Alakija, Victor Reginald Osborne and other partners. That was 23 years before the Nigerian Tribune came to being. Daily Times was the doyen of the Nigerian press until Nigeria happened to it in 1975, when the military government of the late General Murtala Mohammed forcefully took it over for Nigeria.

When the Yoruba say “irun è kún bi irun Ìwòfà àdáwó jo yá – bushy hair like that of a jointly owned pawn)”, they are saying the subject lacks care, needs attention. That simply tells you that, except the divine intervenes, in this clime, publicly owned ventures suffer neglect, and sickness and death.

How come Daily Times is no more, but for the past seven and half decades, the Nigerian Tribune has weathered the storm, waxing strong?

Established by the Avatar, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, on November 16, 1949, the Nigerian Tribune will be 75 years old on Saturday. It has not been a bed of roses. The strength of the newspaper is in the vision and mission of its founder, Awolowo. Note also that those who have managed the paper all these 75 years have been committed to the mission of the visioner.

At 75, Tribune has not only outlived its contemporaries but has also remained a going concern; surviving every arrow of death shot at it from different angles. Why is it so?

There is this hunters’ chant, a traditional poem, Salute to the elephant, published in “A Selection of African Poetry” by K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent. In the poem, the poet says the Elephant is: “Ajanaku who walks with a heavy tread. /Demon who swallow palm-fruit bunches whole, even with the spiky pistil-cells.” Nothing describes the Nigerian Tribune at 75 more than these lines. The paper is the real Ajanaku, who “stands sturdy and alert, who walks slowly as if reluctantly / …Whom one sees and points towards with all one’s fingers.”

How has the Tribune managed to survive the last 75 years? The elephant stays its course, maintains its character, remains true to itself and keeps its memory intact. That is why it does not die the death of cats. Can we first understand what Nigeria is, and how the nation runs its affairs? You and I know that here, what belongs to everybody belongs to nobody. The community dog is likely to die of starvation because everyone thinks the other person has fed it. We are a nation where nobody pays attention to any commonly owned venture.

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That is the singular reason why our refineries won’t work and illegal, crude, bush refineries keep mushrooming and functioning to the chagrin of the State. Our National Grid continues to collapse, and other privately owned power installations thrive. While nobody pays attention to the maintenance of our National Grid and is left to suffer epileptic feats intermittently, private solar power installations receive constant attention from their owners because it is in their interest that they survive.

Again, in Yoruba music kinesiology, the hands come first before the gyration of the body (owó ni saá jú ijó). The axiom admits that it is only when the right step is taken that a dancer can have a perfect outing at the arena.

Power supply in Nigeria, especially when the government became the major key player in that sector, has been epileptic as anyone can imagine. It is a problem that did not start today, will not end today, and has no end in sight. There is no solution in sight to ameliorate its effects on the helpless and hapless people.

Many communities in the country are used to darkness such that they don’t know when the defunct National Electrical Power Authority (NEPA), transformed to its current Abiku sibling, the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). Generally, Nigerians are used to systemic failures in all aspects of life. We have communities which in the last one decade or more, have not experienced power supply. Those ones don’t belong to any Band, the recent, but amusing stratification of electricity users in Nigeria.

Sleep has become a rarity in our neighbourhoods because of the noise pollution from the various electricity generating sets popularly known as generators. The seeming reprieve we have now, we owe to the high cost of fuel. Our society is the type where the citizens provide their own portable water, fix their roads, hire night guards for their security, provide electricity for themselves and still pay utility taxes to the government!

We question nothing; not even the crass inefficiency of those we elected to be our leaders. Nigerians have developed that thick skin that enables them to move on irrespective of the pain the government dishes out on a daily basis.

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We have had more than 10 collapses of our National Grid this year alone. We have had three in the last two weeks! Whatever little electricity the Generating Companies (GENCOs) can generate, we have no capacity to transmit them to the central point called National Grid so that the Distribution Companies (DISCOs) can purchase and distribute to the people. The inconsequential megawatt in the National Grid is what we cannot manage optimally!

Why do we have an Abiku as our National Grid? Why does the facility collapse almost every week? Who is in charge; who has been interrogated and who has been sanctioned for the obvious laxity?

I once explained the meaning of the name of an old diviner, Ifábonmí (The Oracle does not deceive me), on this page. The full name is multiple-syllabic – Ifábomíèminabonràmi (The Oracle does not deceive me, and I will not deceive myself). That is the name I want to adopt in my observations on this matter.

Anyone may want to believe that we have genuine insurmountable problems with our National Grid. I don’t share that opinion. I know, with the hindsight of a singular experience, that whatever is wrong with our National Grid is deliberate, a result of our personal greed! The National Grid collapses at will because there is a calculated attempt put in place to satisfy the greed of some Nigerians. In essence, what we are experiencing in terms of power outages occasioned by a malfunctioning National Grid is the work of profiteering vampires whose greed has remained insatiable!

In February this year, I was in the entourage of the Minister of Power, Adedayo Adelabu, to a GENCO in Ihovbor Community, Benin City. The minister’s mission to the community was to inspect the power-generating plant located in the agrarian community.

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The plant, which goes by the name, Ihovbor Power Plant or Benin Power Generating Company, is owned by the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC). It was set up in May 2013, as “an open cycle gas turbine power plant built to accommodate future Conversion to Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) configuration.”

The government-owned power plant, when fully operated, can generate 500 megawatts of power for evacuation (transmission) to the National Grid. The minister said that the plant “is a brand new one.” Unfortunately, new as the Ihovbor Power Plant is, it transmits nothing to the National Grid because its turbines are perpetually shut down for its neighbouring plant owned by some individuals to work.

I documented that visit in a piece published on this page on February 27, 2024, under the headline: “The darkness called Nigeria”. While the government plant generates 100 megawatts of its 500 megawatts capacity, the private plant generates 461 megawatts. Now, the arrangement is that for any megawatt the private plant generates which the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) cannot transmit to the National Grid, the TCN entered into a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the private plant and pays an average of $30 million every month!

This is where the complication arises. The government shuts down its own power plant to allow a private plant to function and then goes ahead to pay a whopping sum of $30 million for megawatts that are generated but not transmitted. The private plant, to add insult to our national injury, runs on the facilities of the government owned plant! If you ask a multi-billionaire, I know, to describe this situation, he will simply tell you it is a case of someone helping someone!

Incidentally, the NDPHC, which owns the Ihovbor Power Plant in Benin City, has nine other such plants in Omotoso, Olorunsogo, Calabar, Geregu, Omoku, Gbaron, Sapele and Enugu. All these plants, if optimally used, will generate 4,700 megawatts of power!

The questions we should ask is: How many of such government owned plants are working? How many privately owned plants are getting $30 million PPA every month at the expense of our public plants? Who are the owners of the private plants? Who are their partners in government and out of government?

And before we think that private power generation and distribution is rocket science, I present to you the experience of the CCETC Ossiomo Power Company LTD, Benin City, which was initiated by the immediate past Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State, as an Independent Power Project (IPP). It was a fierce battle before the project saw the light of the day. The Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) management fought tooth and nail to frustrate the project.

In one of the meetings between the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Edo State Government, Obaseki practically walked the then Managing Director of the BEDC out of the Government House. Obaseki succeeded with the Private Power Project because of his tenacity of purpose. Today, all Edo State Government offices in Benin City are connected to the Ossiomo power supply and they have good stories to tell.

The example of Ossiomo is a definition of a focused government. What Obaseki demonstrated is rugged political will and the determination to make a difference and place the people above any other consideration. The same feat was replicated in Enugu a few months ago.

Why can’t we have as many Ossiomo across the nation? Why do we rely on a National Grid that is suffering from epilepsy? The answer is very clear: GREED! The National Grid needs to collapse as many times as possible so that the fat maggots of power generating profiteers can get their monthly $30 million PPA for power generated but not transmitted.

To fix whatever problems we have with our National Grid, we need to first address and permanently fix the problem of our National Greed! What solution do I recommend? I commend the managers of our power industry to take a tutorial from the resilience of the Nigerian Tribune, our inimitable Elephant (Ajanaku), huge as a hill, even in a crouching posture! At 75, Tribune is still waxing stronger and remains resolute, keeping fidelity with the mission and vision of its founder! When we stop treating our National Grid like the proverbial Ìwòfà àdáwó jo yá (jointly owned Ìwòfà – pawn), Nigerians will begin to experience uninterrupted power supply. That is hugely doable!