Oladipupo Awojobi 
Prince Adewole Adebayo, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general elections, has criticised the federal government over its handling of the electricity sector. The lawyer-turned-politician also asserted that any political coalition must lead to a “collision” to be meaningful. He accused the President Bola Tinubu-led administration of repeating the same mistakes it once criticised past governments for. In this interview with OLADIPUPO AWOJOBI, Adebayo discussed these issues and more. Excerpts:
What is your impression of the planned increase in electricity tariff?
What they are doing essentially is to try to dwell more on creating an electricity market and they are trying to follow examples in Chile and other places where electricity is not seen just from the strategic national development point of view; the way it was reflected in our first national development plan. They are not looking at it from the social service point of view; they are looking at it like creating a market for product. The only problem they have is that the product they are creating a perfect market does not exist.
So, it will be good for the government to forget the idea of creating a perfect market. They should try as much as possible to make supply available and it is an engineering question. There is no amount of change of language that can run away from the fact that people will know when there is electricity. Remember how we used to talk about generating 5000 megawatts, now they have changed it. So, it is just a mathematical language. At the end of the day, people will know whether electricity is available, stable and affordable, and it requires a lot of investments.
The problem with politics is that the president has only four years and if you have an engineering project that requires 16 years of continuous investment, there is no need lying to the people that you are going to fix it in four years. You will see that many people have fallen by the wayside. Bola Ige came and said that in six months, there will be electricity. If you listened to Babatunde Fashola, by now we should be swimming in electrical current. I believe that in his house now, he is probably running on a generator. So, what we need to understand is the advice I gave in 2001. I remember in September 2001, I attended the National Council on Power and I advised them to de-politicise power and make it an investment, just like you need to de-politicise health care delivery and things like that, because these things require time and major investment.
I think the government should do more in terms of investing public money in core areas and the way we have relied too much on the national grid; the engineering requirements of the national grid are too technical for the people in the ministry to manage. So, we should do it the other way round. The grid is cheaper if it works, but I think that micro grates and captain systems are more manageable and more reliable. They need to also work on the excessive bureaucracy that they operate. I made a huge investment in electricity in my community in Ondo State and I did it through solar. The second phase I tried to engage the government and I made a heavy investment in electrification, using their grid. One and a half years later, they are still doing inspections. I have done all the engineering and bought all the equipment. And when you buy all this equipment, everything is donated to the government automatically. So, they need to reduce the bureaucracy, and work on the affordability. The National Council of State and National Economic Council should deal with it; all of them should come together and make the right investment in the right mix of energy sources and we should thread very delicately when it comes to wheeling power over thousands of kilometers. We don’t have that executive and managerial capacity for someone who is in Ibadan to be relying on power coming from Kainji, or someone who is in Yola expecting power to come all the way from maybe Afam. So, you need to localise it and some of the monkey business they are doing with new hydro-powers like some of the ones that are now in controversy in various courts internationally, if the investments had been made in some of these power stations, by now capacity would have gone up and we won’t be having litigations.
You talked about decentralising it and that’s what the President did with the signing of the Act, but it appears only about 27 out of 36 States have taken it up, meaning the government has something about that; don’t you think so?
They are decentralising the market but what I am saying generally is for them to make the power available. Even if there are statistics of capturing power, they are not capturing the investments that private people are making. They went to Tanzania looking for $35billion, but do you know how much money Nigerians spend on their own? So, we can actually plan the market better.
You talked about not politicising it; do you fear that Nigeria might become a one-party state or is it already becoming a one-party state?
I don’t think so. The problem with politics is that the elite are the same. They feed off one another.
That includes you?
Yes, mostly, the elites are the same; we just have to make a difference. The elites have the same political belief. They disagree on the issue of sharing positions and all of that, but we are trying to bring core ideological differences. It is difficult to pretend to be different when you are not different and that is why it looks like there is no opposition because when you believe in the same thing and rotate positions in government, you behave the same way. You can see that President Bola Tinubu is behaving like former president Goodluck Jonathan who he really opposed and sponsored protests against but he is Jonathan times 10. So, you will see that they behave in the same way. What he was protesting against Jonathan for is what he is doing even far more than Jonathan did.
Could you give examples?
The removal of fuel subsidy, for example, and so many other things like the issue of accountability. What I am saying is that the Nigerian political elites are not different. There is one single tendency and because there is one single tendency, even when they are in different political parties, it is easy for them to cross from one party to the other or remain in their own party and sabotage it to work for another party because there is no real difference between them and until we have real difference, we won’t see that distinction.
Nigerians are lamenting the lack of virile opposition parties in the country and here you are talking about sabotage; what do you make of the popular view that there is no virile opposition party in Nigeria?
What I can say is that all the parties that are not in government are regarded as opposition, but the dynamics of the Nigerian politics is not that way. Many of these parties are supposed to be in coalition. In fact, technically speaking, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) are in coalition.
You said technically in coalition; could you break this down?
This is simple. A foremost leader of the PDP is a strong minister in the administration of the APC and not only did he get there in his private capacity, he got the clearance of his party, the PDP, to go and be a minister under the APC government. You can’t get that kind of clearance from the National Working Committee of the Social Democratic Party SDP, they can’t give you that.
Secondly, we are not angry or displeased with the PDP, but the fact remains that if you look at the policies of the party, they resemble those of the APC. So, it is good for them to try to work together. What will happen is that in the near future, ideology will be the acid test to know which party is in opposition because Nigerians don’t like to be duped. Imagine how much opposition that has been mounted against Tinubu since he became President. People will be duped if I come to power and I start doing exactly what he is doing. That is why I am saying that we should apply the acid test of ideology to say the fact that your party is not in government now doesn’t mean you are actually doing opposition politics. It could be that you are doing coalition politics and you are now having issues among yourselves on how to share the spoils of office.
APC is still an amalgamation of political parties. Peter Obi said he is not opposed to a coalition, do you see the parties coming together and working together to take over power from the APC; I mean is there a possibility of a coalition of the opposition parties?
Yes, there should be a coalition but that coalition should lead to collision. Any coalition that does not lead to collision is not a coalition, because what you want to do is to coalesce all the opposition parties so that they can oppose or collide with the ruling party. But if you look more like the ruling party, why will I be in coalition with you? So, there must be an ideological convergence. What we in the SDP are trying to do with some other partners is that we are trying to have a consensus regarding how governance should be done. We are not interested in ganging up to remove one person. They did that against Jonathan in 2015. They tried it against Buhari in 2019, but it didn’t work. But, to be against an individual is not an ideological framework. You must agree on what to do with power; what you will do with the constitution, rule of law, public expenditure and revenues, and what are the priorities in government and all those things. If you don’t agree with them. I have attended some meetings where people discussed how terrible Tinubu is, I have no doubt about that for sure, but is that what I am going to do my politics on? So, what I want to get clear is where do we agree? What’s your view on power generation, on education? Why should I join you to remove Tinubu if that is the only thing you want to do and you are going to continue with his policies, like not funding education and asking kids to go and take loans with no guarantee of jobs after graduation? Why will I join you to oppose one person, who in my own view is too old for the job and I am going to bring another person who is even older than the person who is too old for the job.
The President of the United States of America, Donald Trump is 78…
Yes, Donald Trump is 78, congratulations to the Americans.
Joe Biden was even older…
And they made a strong point out of that. They have a system that can take a mannequin. You can elect a mannequin as US President. They have a system, though Trump is working very hard to make sure that the system is challenged, but hitherto, there is a system in America that does not depend too much on what an individual is. We don’t have such a strong system in Nigeria.
