Turning Adelabu’s Insult On Nigerian Sensibilities Into Green Advantage While Pocketing Wealth
The Oasis Reporters
April 13, 2024
The Nigerian Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, was said to have apologised to Nigerians over his seemingly inappropriate comments about people leaving their freezers and air conditioners on indefinitely as long as there is electricity at the ministerial press briefing about a week ago.
Adelabu had questioned Nigerians who keep their freezers and air conditioners on when they are not home.
He said Nigerians lack the culture of power consumption management due to its affordability.
He had 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 (air conditioning) 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, 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.”
The comical play to the gallery press briefing Adelabu gave would have been pure humor, if not gallows humor if the minister had permitted hard questioning because the power ministry he superintends over knows that Nigeria produces about 4,500MW of power for a population of over 200 million. That is perhaps slightly less than what New York City consumes. Even South Africa at its peak production with a population of 50 million residents, produced 150,000MW. So where is the power that Nigerians are wasting?
In reality, most Nigerians have freezers at home, but many would tell you that they are hardly powered even for a few weeks in a whole year. Freezers have been cupboards.
But this article is not about the state of power in Nigeria. But rather to show that Adelabu may be a coffee drinker. But he probably doesn’t smell it. Ordinarily, he ought to have taken a gulp and looked up at rooftops in his neighborhood.
When people build houses nowadays, they install solar panels to get their electricity which would be off-grid. Many people are doing that as a defiant sign to tell the minister that he can keep his power to himself. They no longer need it, after 63 years of predicament that the power ministry has placed Nigerians. And that was actually before the youthful Minister was born.
They frittered the $3.5b or $16b away depending on the story you want to listen to.
The Chinese now sell refrigerators that Solar electricity can power. There are Solar television sets and so many gadgets are exiting the use of government electricity that bill citizens on an estimated basis because they know that installing meters for customers would be counterproductive to their financial vision.
The next step to take towards the freedom of Nigerians from the humiliation and tyranny of the Power ministry is for the nation’s electrical engineers to configure the freezers and air-conditioning sets towards being Solar power compliant. It would be an industry worth billions.
If this becomes a reality, it would be a hard lesson to learn for Nigerians who have really suffered in the hands of the Power ministry and their blunt refusal to make the citizenry happy, as fellow Africans are in other countries like Uganda, Kenya, Malawi etc are, electricity-wise.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
