_Our power minister, Adebayo Adelabu, is now mocked as the King of Darkness—Kábíyèsi Olókùnkùn. I laugh at his traducers. They are crowning the wrong monarch. The true emperor of darkness sits higher. For more than three years, the president has wandered luxuriantly through the bush of politics while abandoning the hard road of policy that might confront Nigeria’s federalist tragedy._
_You cannot prevent the Ifa (palm nut) from showing its palm kernel behavior (Kò sì bí a ò ti ṣe Ifá tí kò ní hù’wà ekuro). It is in the nature of politics and politicians to fly or shoot down ambitions. Adebayo Adelabu seeks to feature in next year’s governorship election in Oyo State. Sometimes one pursues a title and gets a completely different one. Shehu Shagari wanted to be senator, he became president; Ahmadu Bello wanted to be Sultan of Sokoto, he became the premier of the whole of northern Nigeria. Adelabu’s impatient ‘lovers’ in his Ibadan have made him king. They dressed him up in a regalia of scorn and crowned him Kábíyèsi Olókùnkùn of Okunkun—His Royal Majesty, the King of Darkness. They say he is in charge of national grid collapse and unending darkness. Their reasoning is simple and brutal: Ibadan, the minister’s hometown, is lit up in months of unremitting darkness under his watch. So, if the city, and indeed, the entire country sits in pitch darkness, the minister of power must be its monarch._
_But the logic of power does not quite support their satire. In governance, ministers are not sovereigns; they are agents. The sovereign authority belongs to the principal who appoints them. In presidential systems, that principal is the president. In administrative theory, responsibility flows upward. Authority is at the very top. The minister executes policy; the president embodies and orders it. If Nigeria must coronate a monarch for darkness, political logic suggests that…_
_In quarrelsome politics, songs easily become proverbs, and proverbs songs. To crown Adelabu the “King of Darkness” while sparing his appointor is to blame the drum for a rhythm composed by the drummer. A bad workman, the proverb says, always…_
_The minister is styled Olókùnkùn Birimù Birimù I. The regnal ordinal “I” (The First), suggests that before him, history has produced no predecessor worthy of such investiture. Olókùnkùn The First, stands, therefore, as a…_
_Back to Nigeria’s power crisis and the anger in the streets: are we condemned to spend this century groping through darkness?_
_We have a peacock government that prances and preens as though it were the best that will ever be. But if…_
_My point, therefore, is that Nigerians protesting blackouts are reacting to symptoms that manifest as outages. They should instead be…_
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