Opinion

Fubara: Go, going…

Published

9 months ago

January 12, 2026

The Rivers godfatherism crisis highlights tensions between political patrons and protégés as governance, legality and stability come under strain

A one-time presidential aspirant in the United States was asked, if he loses the primaries, whether he would accept to be the running mate to the victor, but he quipped: “I hate all vices, including the vice-president!”

Also read: Rivers APC Blocks Impeachment: Governor Fubara’s Leadership Protected

I, too, hate all vices, the vices of godfathers and godsons inclusive! We should not condemn one without condemning the other since both are two sides of the same coin.

In the Nigerian political system of today, it is a kind of willing seller and willing buyer market.

In a similar fashion, when we condemn vote-buying, we must also not forget to condemn vote-selling.

There can be no vote-buying if there are no willing vote-sellers.

It fits perfectly what economists call the law of demand and supply.

Both legs must stand before the law can work.

I am not unmindful, though, of the argument that one can be a victim of the other, but victimhood should not totally absolve anyone of blame if we admit that everyone has a responsibility, and duty, to act as an agent of change if we are to stand any chance of building a just and egalitarian society.

The victim, like Karl Marx posits in the opening words of The Communist Manifesto, must understand that he has nothing but his chains to lose. He has a duty, and a price to pay, if he must move in that direction. Otherwise…

Nothing exists that does not serve a function or purpose; otherwise, it would not exist in the first place.

Look around and see if you can find one such thing that is not serving this or that purpose and for this or that person.

What you abhor or adjure is what someone else embraces and enjoys.

When governments were pulling no stops to wipe out marijuana use was when Peter Tosh sang “Legalize it, and I will advertise it!”

Some political theorists posit that even corruption exists to perform some (inescapable) functions; otherwise, there would be no corruption.

How many traffic offenders in Lagos state, for instance, will choose to go the way of the law and have their vehicle impounded, go for psychiatric test, and then pay a whopping some of money when they can easily part with a paltry sum as bribe and go their way?

So, when prescribed penalties for minor offences are stiff, we inadvertently create loopholes for law enforcement agents to exploit, not to enrich the State but for their own selfish benefits.

I have heard people quote Jesus Christ (specifically in Matthew 5:25 – 26 and Luke 12:58) to kind of support this; akin to how Antonio, William Shakespeare’s character in The Merchant of Venice (Act 1, Scene 3), described Shylock as “an evil soul producing holy witness”

And Jesus said: “Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou has paid the uttermost farthing.” (Matthew 5: 25 – 26, King James Version). Oh-ooo! So who does that?

Most godfathers are taken in by the deceit of their godsons; it is impossible to believe that anyone will back another person for high office if he knew he would be stabbed in the back afterwards.

Many godsons are like Shylock, in Shakespeare’s work quoted above, who use “piety for deceitful purposes”.

And like Anthonio warned his friend Bassanio concerning Shylock, they are “much like rotten apples with a goodly outside.”

I doubt if Nyesom Wike would have supported Siminalayi Fubara if he knew that what he has turned out to be is the kind of person the Rivers state governor is!

Is there anything good with godfathers insisting on choosing their successors? The answer is both “Yes” and “No.”

Yes, because this is a practice not limited or restricted to politics; even in the private sector, it is widely practised.

In social clubs, alma mater organisations, it is the same thing.

Successors are selected well before time and are groomed to take office; and this is well-known to everyone.

To ensure continuity.

To ensure that the right hands are those allowed to take over.

Sometimes if you allow for so-called level-playing ground, the best candidate may not emerge.

As Jesus Christ again said in Luke 16: 8: “And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” (King James Version).

Why is this so? According to a preacher, it is because the children of this world “are most times more intentional.”

While the children of light are still prevaricating and counting the cost, their wordly counterparts would have quickly made up their mind and seized the initiative.

Before anyone could say “Jack Robinson”, they would have grabbed it, snatched it, and run with it! Does that sound familiar?

So, if the purpose of godfatherism is to ensure continuity, prevent the unworthy from grabbing, snatching, and running with it, so as to ensure that good governance and the dividends of democracy percolate the polity, then, it can be looked upon with favourable eyes.

But even at that, a pool of the best candidates must be allowed to contest and contend. And the process must be transparent, fair and just.

Let it not be a one-man decision or an imposition. Worse, it must not be the imposition of someone who cannot emerge as one of the best in a free and fair contest.

And the purpose must not be for godson to cover the odious tracts of godfather or pander to his vainglorious wishes in such a way that the very purpose of good governance itself will be defeated.

In other words, godfatherism becomes an aberration and an anathema where the best candidate does not emerge; where it is an imposition; where the objective or goal is not continuity for good governance but pandering to the wishes of the godfather, good or bad; and where the interests of the governed are meant to take the back seat, if any at all.

The problem of most godfather-godson relationships in Nigeria the Rivers State example inclusive is that they fail most or all of the litmus tests stated above.

So, the blame must be spread evenly across godfathers and godsons.

A man who, with eyes wide open, climbs the back of a tiger only to think of disembarking on his own terms without considering the consequences cannot, in my view, be reckoned with as a man of wisdom or integrity.

Agreement is agreement, they say, and even among thieves there is nobility.

In my opinion, Fubara knew and planned from Day One not to honour whatever agreement he was entering into with Wike; his interest and goal was simply for the latter to railroad him into office as governor.

Use-and-dump! Wike will have none of that! Armageddon!

This is why Rivers state is on the boil.

The state is said to have a chequered history of godsons betraying their godfathers; yet, they have not learnt any lesson.

Instead, they have taken it as given.

That must be the reason why efforts, up to the presidential level, to help bring peace to that state have floundered.

Is violence in their blood? Is “wahala” in their DNA?

Some actions of Fubara make me cast a ponderous look at the “short-man devil” again and again.

Wike’s actions, obviously, suggest he made a very bad choice of a horse to back and should have himself to blame.

Some have said this is Karma knocking on Wike’s door!

I marveled when Fubara chose to run the state with only 3 or 4 legislators of the state House of Assembly supporting him, passing budgets, screening and approving appointees.

That is egregious.

He bulldozed the state House of Assembly, pretending he wanted to rebuild it! Wasteful!

We operate a democracy and separation of powers between the three arms of government the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary is one of its fulcrums.

According to Baron de Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers, which has gained universal acceptance and applicability, each of the three arms of government are equal and co-terminus.

In addition, the Legislature performs oversight functions over the Executive arm of government.

The Legislature cannot be so denied and we still claim to be a democracy. Tinpot dictator!

The Rivers state legislators are right to insist that no state governor may operate a budget not passed by the state House of Assembly.

But since the budget in operation in Rivers state at the moment is the one approved by the National Assembly for the state of emergency period, and the budget is still expected to run till later this year, I submit that the Rivers state legislators should get hold of the budget and scrupulously scrutinise it to ensure that it is what Fubara is implementing.

Any deviation from that budget by Fubara without legislative approval is illegal.

Therefore, any impeachment move against Fubara and his deputy on the issue of operating a budget without legislative approval should be held in abeyance for now.

But on any other alleged impeachable offences, the legislators are free to act.

The last time the House moved against Fubara, a political solution by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, couched in the form of a six-month state of emergency, saved the day.

But if, ultimately, a political solution fails in Rivers state, then, the law should be allowed to take its due course.

FEEDBACK

It is not only airports that are proliferated in NIgeria; universities, too, are proliferated.

This happens because we don’t have effective national planning.

So, we have the proliferation of everything. Even states and local governments do not often plan things properly.

When was the last time you heard of a national development plan? – Wale Ajao.

The threat of President Bola Tinubu to the governors (on local government autonomy) was just a facade.

I will not be surprised if the situation continues, with the governors disobeying the Supreme Court judgment and no action is taken by the President to sanction the governors, moreso now that we are entering 2026, the year of political campaigns all over the place for the 2027 general elections! The president needs the governors, and vice versa, to retain their political offices in the 2027 general elections. – Dr. JF Olukotun.

The US airstrike (on terrorist groups in Nigeria) is a welcome development.

It is not humiliation.

While I do not know the intentions of Donald Trump, there is nothing wrong in collaboration to fight a common enemy.

Also read: Fubara Swears In Benibo Anabraba as Rivers SSG

In the past, Nigeria had led the fight against common enemies in other countries. Examples abound! – Kola Oloye.

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Opinion

Tegbe’s 24-Hour Energy Zones and the Shift From Megawatts to Money

Published

1 week ago

October 2, 2026

Mariam Balogun

By Sufuyan Ojeifo,

There is a point at which a country’s electricity problem ceases to be merely an electricity problem. It becomes a problem of economic geography.

Also read: Everton Celebrates Nigeria’s 66th Independence With Football Legends

Where can factories operate with confidence? Where can businesses plan beyond the next appearance of a generator? Where can hospitals, schools, technology companies, markets and households begin to organise their lives around the reasonable expectation that electricity will be there?

This is the thinking behind the latest initiative from the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, to develop what the Federal Government calls Energy Zones – defined corridors where homes, businesses and industries could receive stable, 24-hour electricity.

The proposed zones cover the Lagos axis, the Abuja-Kaduna-Kano corridor and the Enugu-Port Harcourt corridor. Tegbe’s latest move is a meeting with selected electricity distribution companies to begin working through what it would take to make the idea real.

At first glance, it sounds like another promise of uninterrupted electricity in a country that has heard too many such promises. However, there is something more consequential in the architecture of the proposal.

Tegbe is asking Nigerians to look at the power problem differently.

For years, the national conversation has been dominated by generation. How many megawatts are being produced? How much can the transmission grid carry? How many generating plants are working? These are important questions. But electricity does not become useful simply because it has been generated.

It must travel. It must be received. It must be distributed. And ultimately, somebody must be able to use it. That last part has often been treated as the end of the conversation when, in reality, it is where the economic value of electricity begins.

Tegbe has put the point plainly. The constraint is not limited to generation and transmission; it also includes how much electricity can be taken up and delivered at the distribution end.

The proposed Energy Zones are intended to address precisely that gap while improving commercial demand and the revenue performance of the distribution companies.

There is an important idea here.

Nigeria does not necessarily have to wait for every weakness in the electricity value chain to be solved simultaneously before beginning to create pockets of reliability.

A country of more than 200 million people, with enormous differences in industrial activity, population density and commercial demand, may have to proceed through carefully selected economic corridors while the wider system is repaired.

This is not an argument for abandoning the national grid. It is an argument for making the grid more economically purposeful.

The three corridors selected by the Ministry are revealing. Lagos and its adjoining industrial axis represent perhaps the country’s most concentrated commercial and industrial demand.

The Abuja-Kaduna-Kano corridor connects the political capital with major commercial and industrial centres in the North. Enugu-Port Harcourt links important commercial, manufacturing and energy-producing communities in the South-East and South-South.

These are not simply lines on a power map. They are lines on Nigeria’s economic map. That distinction matters.

For too long, Nigerians have experienced electricity largely as a household inconvenience. The light goes off. The generator comes on. A business buys diesel. A manufacturer factors self-generation into production costs. A hospital makes contingency arrangements.

A young entrepreneur learns, often painfully, that the real price of electricity is not what appears on the bill but what it costs to keep the business alive when the supply fails.

A reliable electricity corridor changes that equation.

If a factory knows that a particular industrial cluster has dependable power, investment decisions begin to change.

If a commercial district can plan around predictable electricity, operating costs become easier to manage.

If businesses can depend on supply for most of the day, generators can move from being the first line of defence to being what they were always supposed to be: backup.

This is where Tegbe’s technocratic instincts may prove significant.

His background is not that of a career power-sector operator. His professional experience has largely been in consulting, fiscal and economic reform, institutional transformation and advisory work. That background has been visible in his early approach to the ministry – diagnosis, audits, financial questions, infrastructure bottlenecks, and attempts to identify where one part of the system is preventing another from functioning properly.

His Energy Zones proposal fits that pattern. It treats the electricity market less as a single machine waiting for one dramatic repair and more as a system of interconnected constraints that can be isolated, diagnosed and addressed.

Tegbe had already identified the three corridors as priorities for grid stabilisation, with technical audits intended to establish the condition of critical infrastructure. The latest engagement with DisCos suggests that the idea is now moving beyond technical diagnosis towards the more difficult question of how distribution will work within those corridors.

That is where the hard work begins.

A 24-hour power zone cannot be created by a press statement. It requires generation that is available when needed, transmission capacity that can carry it, distribution infrastructure capable of receiving it, transformers and feeders that can withstand the load, metering that properly captures consumption, customers willing and able to pay, and a commercial structure in which the various participants have an incentive to keep the system working.

It also requires protection. Vandalism and energy theft do not respect administrative boundaries. Neither do faulty equipment, unpaid bills or poor collection practices. Tegbe himself has acknowledged that the sector’s problems reinforce one another. Weak collections affect the market. Market weakness affects maintenance and gas payments. Unreliable supply in turn depresses collections.

This is why the Energy Zone experiment, if it is to succeed, must be judged by more than the number of hours electricity is available.

The real test will be whether reliability begins to produce economic consequences. Does industrial output increase? Do businesses spend less on self-generation? Does investment respond? Do DisCos collect more because customers are receiving a service they can trust? Does the government recover enough value from improved commercial activity to justify further infrastructure investment?

Those are the questions that should eventually accompany the glossy language of 24-hour power.

And there is another question that Tegbe and the Federal Government will have to confront: what happens outside the zones?

Nigeria cannot become a collection of electrically privileged corridors surrounded by communities waiting indefinitely for their turn.

The logic of concentrating investment in high-demand areas can be defended economically, especially if the resulting commercial activity strengthens the wider electricity market.

But the strategy will ultimately have to demonstrate how successful zones become stepping stones towards broader reliability.

That is the difference between an experiment and a system.

There is also a danger in admiring the architecture of reform from the comfort of an office.

It has to be said here that the statement issued by the minister’s media aide was long on ambition and conspicuously short on the details that matter. No timeline. No capacity targets. No specific investment figures. It is the kind of announcement that has, historically, been the precursor to nothing at all.

So Nigerians should watch the idea with interest, but also with the healthy scepticism that comes from decades of promises about electricity.

The minister deserves a measure of credit for at least diagnosing an important part of the illness.

For once, the conversation has shifted from the head to the feet – from generation to distribution, from megawatts to money.

At the same time, the Nigerian people have been given blueprints before. They have learned to admire the drawings while the building crumbles.

The Energy Zones remain a proposal. The government has not yet announced the detailed capacity requirements, implementation timetable or precise infrastructure investments that would make 24-hour supply possible.

That is not necessarily a fatal flaw. It may simply mean the idea is still being worked out.

But it does mean that the language of 24-hour power should be treated as an aspiration until it is matched by the machinery of implementation.

Yet the proposal deserves attention because it reflects a potentially important shift in the way the power problem is being conceived.

Nigeria may not fix its electricity crisis in one heroic sweep. It may have to build reliability corridor by corridor, demand centre by demand centre, and economic cluster by economic cluster.

There is nothing inherently glamorous about such work. It is engineering, finance, regulation, distribution and relentless attention to the weak link in the chain. But perhaps that is precisely the point.

The country has spent decades waiting for the great national electricity breakthrough.

Tegbe’s emerging approach suggests something less dramatic and potentially more practical: make a few economically critical parts of the system work properly, learn from them, strengthen the model, and expand it.

The success of that approach will ultimately be measured not in speeches or megawatts, but in what Nigerians can do with the electricity when it arrives.

Does the factory run a second shift? Does the business hire more workers? Does the hospital keep its equipment running through the night? Does the young entrepreneur stop budgeting for diesel and start budgeting for growth?

Also read: Everton Celebrates Nigeria’s 66th Independence With Football Legends

That is where the real power story begins. And that is the standard against which Tegbe’s Energy Zones should ultimately be judged: not by whether 24-hour power sounds impressive in a press release, but by whether the lights stay on long enough for Nigerians to build something with them.