Opinion

When couples are partners in crime

Published

2 years ago

January 5, 2024

Trends Admin

Emmanuel Onwubiko

When couples are partners in crime

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

ON 4th of January 2024, yours faithfully woke up from the wrong side of my bed, feeling like I don’t want to go to work today even when as the head of the HUMAN

RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA), I had scheduled a major media conference which is the first in the new year 2024.

What came to my mind was a particular popular song by some European singers few years back who were actually singing that they don’t want to do anything on a particular day and that they will simply sleep, wake up, have their bath, eat and go back to sleep.

I really can’t figure out the identity of those musical team members but I can remember graphically that they were each mimicking in a video recording, series of decorated monkeys who were just lazying joyfully around the room.

The rhythm of that award winning song promoting relaxation dominated my thinking faculty except for one necessary distraction: my daily reading of news copies from Nigeria and globally.

That necessary distraction not withstanding, the nostalgia of the just ended Yuletide period which I spent in my hometown of Arondizuogu, was hanging all over me like a sweetened bunch of banana fruits falling on top of me from a very well cultivated farmland somewhere in Arondizuogu.

So, I decided to just relax some more hours on my bed before heading out to carry out my mandatory press briefing which we had long scheduled at our non-governmental organisation.

It was whilst I was in a relaxation mood, browsing through the Internet for local news about Nigeria that I ran into a particularly intriguing news copy from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

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Mind you, the EFCC has recently become the cynosure of all eyes from curious Nigerians who are simply imagining if this government anti-graft institution has become a new body that will say and mean what they say regarding the crusade against growing trend of corruption and economic crimes involving top government officials. If truth be told, the majority of Federal government ministries, agencies and parastatals, have become cesspool of corruption.

Recently, the EFCC tweeted a so-called interview granted by the erstwhile Petroleum minister Mrs. Deziani-Alluson Maduekwe which purports to state that she made confessional statements which a section of the British media carried in which the current governor of Zamfara was implicated in alleged money laundering. But the EFCC quickly deleted that post from their social media account. Predictably, nobody in Nigeria is concerned about such a mind-blowing revelation for whatever it is worth.

But this story isn’t just about the routine news copies about the EFCC parading some youngsters over suspected cases of been involved in advanced fees fraud. It is not about the fallacy made by the EFCC’s head in which he accused seven out of every higher institution’s students of doing ‘yahooyahoo’ or advanced fees fraud.

The story was of a deeper genre which have both the social and cultural dimensions which I think the scholars of social studies or sociology ought to go into broader research to ascertain the trigger for such a social trend.

The story is about the observation made by the EFCC that couples in Nigeria are increasingly getting entangled in criminal cases of frauds and advanced fees fraud.

Also, the EFCC did something particularly impressive: they proffered the fundamentals behind the unprecedented scale of couples in Nigeria getting involved in such crimes as aforementioned.

The head, Cybercrime of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nura Buhari, attributed the increase in the number of couples committing crimes to greed and loss of traditional values.

“It’s just the 21st century generation where people believe they can make money through the internet by identifying a glitch or system weakness and committing fraud,” Buhari said in an interview with one of the nation’s fast growing online newspapers.

The EFCC official was reacting to the rising number of couples caught by the agency for their involvement in internet fraud.

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On 28th November 2023, the Commission arraigned a couple, Oriyomi Idowu and Ruth Idowu, before Justice Mojisola Dada of the Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos over false pretence, money laundering, stealing, retention of stolen property and forgery to the tune of N2,757,188,000.00.

The couple were arraigned alongside Food Commodity Processing Enterprise, Bonway Food Processing Company Limited, Samee Idowu Company Limited and Farmex Integrated Companies Limited, which all belong to Ruth Idowu.

According to EFCC, sometime in 2023 in Lagos, Ruth converted the sum of N10,000,000 to purchase a GLK Benz, purchase sum derived from converting the sum of N500,000,000 belonging to Creditpro Business Support Services with the aim of disguising the illegal origin of the funds.

The accused also dishonestly retained the sum of N936,619,876 in UBA account, property of Creditpro Business Support services, knowing same to be funds fraudulently obtained from Creditpro Business Support Services but the defendants pleaded “not guilty” to the charges.

EFCC also arraigned another couple, Aisha Malkohi (a.k.a Ummitah, Arab Money) and her husband, Abubakar Sadiq Mahmoud (at large), over alleged fraud involving the sum of N410,518,000 meant for the purchase of cars from Saudi Arabia.

They were arraigned on 8th December 2023, before Justice Aisha Mahmud at Kano State High Court after they obtained the sum of N225,259,000 belonging to Farida Ibrahim between 6th January to 16th December, 2022.

The said money was reportedly paid into a Zenith Bank account bearing Abubakar Sadiq Mahmoud for the purchase and supply of 64 cars, from Saudi Arabia.

But Malkohi pleaded not guilty to all the five counts read to her.

Malkohi was arrested by EFCC investigators in Kano following a petition from two people–Farida Ibrahim and Ibrahim Mohammed Abdulrahman–alleging that she conspired with her husband and defrauded them under the guise of supplying them with cars, gold, electronics and kitchen utensils from Saudi Arabia.

EFCC carried out an investigation that revealed the defendant had collected a total sum of N410,518,000 through bank accounts belonging to her company–Golden Grass Hill International Ltd– and her husband’s Zenith Bank account.

Further investigation also revealed that the defendant, alongside her husband, who is still at large, diverted the monies into several bank accounts.

On 19th December 2023, the Enugu Zonal Command of the EFCC arraigned another couple, Mr. Udeani Sunday and his wife, Udeani Amaka, before Justice M.G. Umar of the Federal High Court sitting in Enugu.

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They were arraigned on three-count charges bordering on obtaining the sum of N2,750,000.00 by false pretence in an alleged land fraud.

According to EFCC, between 10th July 2019 to 19th December 2019 in Enugu, the couple lured one Onugu Chinyere to deliver N2,750,000.00 to them under the pretence that they’d sell a plot of land behind Ebenezer Anglican Church, Ala-Uguaji along Enugu/Port Harcourt Road to her, but like the other couples they also pleaded not guilty and the case was adjourned till February 6, 2024.

Looking at these cases and the established harmonious pattern of couples increasingly becoming partners in the crime of fraud from a deeper philosophical point of view, is actually left for philosophers and free thinkers like us to weigh in. So why are couples who ought to behave as embodiment of good behaviour and the supposed teachers of morality and ethics to their children, now turning around to become undesirable social elements?

The EFCC has actually done us the philosophers the favour of pointing towards a very disquieting development in the underworld which should and must be further researched upon to reach a far-reaching understanding of the various underlying dimensions.

This is exactly what I set out in this essay to achieve and first, my initial point of call was a researched document done for the Pontifical commission by some scholars who I believe are Nigerians given the background of the information they shared concerning the genesis, essence and texture of what family means especially in the African milieu.

These Pontifical scholars saw the family as the smallest and oldest institution in society is important for the growth and development of society. It is the building block of society. The family takes a central role in the survival of the society as a whole, both for biological and social reproductions (Olutayo & Omobowale, 2006).

These scholars argued that in Nigeria, marriage is a pathway for the existence of the family. The family is considered a primary aspect of an individual’s life. There is a high value placed on marriage and the family, and most individuals will identify their families as the most important thing in their lives.

However, in their understanding, with modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, there is a shift in how marriage and family are now viewed. This is so true. Marriage in the 21st century is even beginning to take certain unpalatable shapes which is diametrically opposed to the entrenched traditional implications of marriage especially from the angle of what exactly constitutes marriage as it were.

Nevertheless, these scholars aforementioned stated that marriage and family have experienced fundamental changes, and this has major consequences to individuals and the society. Therefore, this presentation will focus on the changing patterns of African marriage and family in Nigeria and will discuss the historical analysis of marriage and family systems in the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial era; the delimiting factors affecting marriage and family systems; visible areas of changes in marriage and family; the future of marriage and family; the importance of family in the present generation; and practical ways to improve marriage and family systems.

On the definition of marriage and family (the philosophical, social, and economic viewpoint of marriage), the social scientists stated that marriage and family are crucial systems in society. They are always linked together. They have a historical background and are as old as man on earth. The present definition of marriage is different from what it was several years ago. Marriage was defined as the union of a man and a woman for reproduction reasons. However, the definition has changed globally. Today, marriage can be defined with different viewpoints, as an institution, a partnership, and as a responsibility. Generally, marriage can be defined as the legally recognized union between two persons that is based on a sexual relationship. The philosophical basis for this union is that man should not be alone, but rather have a union that is completely legal and long-lasting; a legal union that is socially and religiously acceptable for sex and procreation. Socially, marriage forms the base of a family that helps in the transmission of cultural values from one generation to another. Economically, marriage is regarded as a legal union between two people that creates room for mutual gainful interdependence.

Similarly, there are various meanings people give to what constitutes a family. The conservatives will define the family as a social group made up of the father, mother, children, and other extended family members. Sociologically, what constitutes a family is much more complex. A family is defined as a social group that is joined by either blood, marriage, and adoption that serves as the economic unit of the society. Because the family is the bedrock of a society, the state must protect families. The Nigerian marriage and family systems have undergone several changes in society and these changes keep defining whether marriage and family are really functional or necessary in modern society (https:/www.pass.va/en/events/2021/family_ecology/eghafona.html).

There are actually a formidable body of scholarly works on the renowned African cultural values, one of which states that in Africa, the sense of family unit, ethics and etiquette are fundamental to understanding who the African is at all times.

Interestingly, a reputable philosopher and theologian, Reverend father Oliver Onwubiko one of our professors during my years as a Philosophy student in Nekede Owerri under the Claretians Institute of Philosophy, has done a body of scholarship on African cultural values. He listed the following African cultural values: sense of community life; sense of good human relations; sense of sacredness of life; sense of hospitality; sense of the sacred and religion.

From the above, it is unambiguous to assert that the cause of the degeneration that we see happening within the family system in Nigeria, has to do with what Anthropologists identified as social change theory. When the media of mass communication including the social are now dominating their platforms with contents that are poorly produced with the central them of justifying the pursuit of money by all means as the contemporary culture universally.

We will look at a publication of the journal of anthropology that was done in 2012 to understand in broader perspective why couples are increasingly committing crimes which are antithetical to the respected African tradional and cultural values of a sense of respect for honesty and the good name of the family units.

The Anthropologists stated as follows: “Odetola [6] see “social change as primary change in social relation.” Succinctly put, social change means change in social structure, within the framework of such structural changes, in social institutions.”

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“Basic institutions perform function for the society, thus these basic institutions are dynamic and adaptive to changes. It should be noted that the environment of social structure requires certain amount of persistence in some of their features in order to perform that expected function. But observations portray that society and indeed components of social structure change continuously though often imperceptibly. Social change could either bring about progress for the members of a society or visit them with retrogression. As human beings collectively adapt themselves to their environment, they bring about changes to their ways of life.”

“But for the purpose of the status quo, we are concerned about the changes that transform the fabric of our culture occasion our forgotten values day in day out. The applicability of this theory is that it has strongly affected the ways of doing things in all societies. The urbanization and industrialization have altered the totality of our social institutions, not living the political and economic systems unaffected. The Nuclearization of the family has also negatively touched the socialization and internalization processes.”

“In a nutshell, the factors responsible for social change have brought about major changes in the traditional-to-modern society. Since change is inevitable, cultural dynamics of any society cannot be foreclosed be it in form of cultural accumulation, that is, addition of new traits to the already existing ones or cultural reduction, or cultural diffusion which is infusion of new cultural traits. All this can still be in a way checkmated,” (www.hindawi.com).

The lesson is that families in Nigeria should and must return back to the days of yore and embrace a revisiting of the renowned African cultural value systems especially as it relates to the family, hard work, and the sense of honesty.

I remember vividly that my late father Mazi Osonduagwuike Okorieocha Onwubiko once asked me, as a 14 year old Senior Secondary school student, how I got the resources to buy a brand new set of shoes which at that time wasn’t even more than N10,000 but was actually the reigning fashion of that epoch.

But as far as my father was concerned, accountability and transparency were his hallmarks and he made it mandatory that his children will never be permitted to bring in materials or items of suspicious sources or origin.

Recently too, a story in the media was about a mother in Delta State who turned down an offer of a brand new Mercedes benz automobile bought by her undergraduate son in his late tens. The mother refused to accept the car gift because the son is just a student and has no validly traceable source of incomes.

It turned out that the boy was into ‘yahoo yahoo’ or advanced fees fraud.

The contemporary society as it were, has their work cut out and it is imperative that we once more accept and embrace those authentic African cultural values that promote honesty, hard work, and the sense of the sacred and religion.

If this done, couples wouldn’t want to stain their reputation by going into crime because as the popular saying in Africa says that “good name is better than dirty money” and this should be our national mantra rather than the current madness about chasing money and making money by all means.

***Emmanuel Onwubiko is the head of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) And was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA.

Opinion

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Published

2 weeks ago

April 4, 2026

Trends Admin

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism

Farooq Kperogi

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

You may resent Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but you can’t deny that he has earned his place in Nigerian political history as one of the, if not the, most consequential opposition figures in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. He constructed a carefully planned political and rhetorical template to oppose central governments effectively and then converted the symbolic capital he gained into a path to the presidency.

By May 29, Tinubu will mark his third year as president. He is beset by the same constraints his predecessors faced and is reacting to opponents almost exactly as they did, perhaps with even more viciousness and guile.

But the opposition seems to be in the wilderness. It is flustered, incoherent, spineless, and in strategic disarray. It would do well to study how an opposition Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu would have confronted an increasingly tyrannical and devious President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

If Bola Ahmed Tinubu were in opposition today, watching a president preside over widening and deepening oceans of blood and rising insecurity, constrict the space for alternative parties, intensify economic hardship and offer only perfunctory condolence optics amid horrendous mass slaughters, he would launch a sustained, strategic, organized, merciless and unsparing regime of critical engagement using every available medium. We know this because we have a record of him doing precisely that.

My recollection of his key moves as an opposition politician aren’t intended to be exhaustive. They are merely representative.

In March 2013, for instance, in remarks widely reported at the time, Tinubu said that if President Goodluck Jonathan could not guarantee security, he should “honorably resign.” By November 2014, his tone had hardened. According to TheCable, Tinubu said that in any serious country Jonathan would have resigned over the scale of insecurity in the country.

In the same 2014, he accused Jonathan’s government of “failure, lack of capacity, vision and creativity” and of misleading Nigerians about the true state of security.

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That is the vocabulary Tinubu reaches for when he is not in power. He did not treat insecurity as a complicated policy arena deserving of cautious language. He treated it as evidence of unfitness for office.

An aggregation of all his statements about the insecurity that pervaded the country when Jonathan was in government (which has become worse on his watch) amounted to this: insecurity equals loss of legitimacy. That was one of his most potent rhetorical blitzkriegs against Jonathan, which traveled beyond the shores of Nigeria.

The same pattern holds for economic distress. On January 11, 2012, in an article published by PM News, Tinubu attacked Jonathan’s removal of fuel subsidy, dubbing it the “Jonathan tax.” He said the policy breached the social contract between the rulers and the ruled, described it as a punitive imposition on the poor and, crucially, urged Nigerians to resist it.

He wrote that citizens had a duty to “peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition.” That line matters. It shows that Tinubu, in opposition, does not merely diagnose hardship. He authorizes not just rhetorical dissent but physical rebellion against it.

Following his exhortation, there were disabling, convulsive and fatal nationwide protests and strikes. Tinubu aligned himself with that mood. He did not urge patience. He gave moral and political cover to resistance. Some even said he funded the protests, called “Occupy Nigeria,” in which at least 12 people died. It ultimately forced Jonathan to reverse the withdrawal of subsidies, which Tinubu is now implementing with more soullessness than Jonathan ever did.

He also does not leave resistance unorganized. On February 6, 2013, opposition parties merged into what became the All Progressives Congress. Tinubu was one of the principal architects of that coalition. The merger’s stated aim was to end corruption, insecurity and economic stagnation. It was a calculated attempt to convert grievance into power. Tinubu did not wait for electoral cycles to do their work. He engineered an alternative.

When he believed the Jonathan administration was using institutions against the opposition, he said so without equivocation. In January 2014, during the Rivers State political crisis, Tinubu described the disruption of opposition activity as “a frontal assault against democracy” and even a “coup against democracy.” In November 2014, after the chaos at the National Assembly, he again held Jonathan responsible. He saw pattern, not accident, and he said it plainly.

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He went further. In October 2014, when Jonathan sought legislative approval for a $1 billion loan to fight Boko Haram, Tinubu opposed it. He argued that the funds could be used for political purposes rather than security. In other words, he was willing to recast even security spending as partisan maneuvering. That instinct has not been erased by time.

Now bring this record forward.

On April 2, 2026, President Tinubu met victims of the Plateau killings at the airport rather than visiting affected communities, with the presidency citing time and logistical constraints. Strip away the explanations and look at it from the vantage point of opposition Tinubu. This is the sort of image he historically converts into a political weapon. He would not defend it. He would amplify it as proof of cold detachment and deadly incompetence.

In fact, the seemingly intractable and worsening sanguinary communal upheavals that are spreading all over the country and the rising mass abductions for ransom that seem to be unabating would have constituted more than sufficient grounds for opposition Tinubu to delegitimize the presidency of President Tinubu.

There is also the matter of political space. Tinubu’s own rise was made possible by the constellation of opposition forces. The 2013 merger was a deliberate construction of an alternative to an incumbent he portrayed as incompetent and anti-democratic. If he were outside power today and perceived any effort, real or imagined, to frustrate the emergence of rival parties, such as we are seeing with the ADC, he would not respond with restraint. His record from 2013 to 2015 shows a readiness to build countervailing structures and to accuse incumbents of undermining democracy.

In early 2013 when there were credible fears that INEC might block or frustrate the registration of the new opposition merger that became the APC, including the controversy over a rival party using the same acronym, Tinubu framed any attempt to deny registration as authoritarian sabotage of democracy by the president.

Tinubu’s stance as opposition was confrontational and absolutist. When he was outside power, he interpreted procedural or institutional resistance in maximalist terms as existential threats to democracy, not routine political or legal friction.

And he routinely blamed it on the sneaky wiles of the president, not the institutions that were responsible for the actions he railed against. Opposition Tinubu would have put the blame for INEC’s withdrawal of recognition of the David Mark-led leadership of the ADC squarely on President Tinubu’s desk and would have called it Tinubu’s fascist, cowardly, fear-inspired strangulation of a rival, oppositional political space.

What emerges from this is not a series of isolated reactions but a coherent oppositional method. Tinubu indicts insecurity as presidential failure, frames economic pain as betrayal, promotes and legitimizes physical public resistance, works to consolidate opposition power and heaps all blames for the misfortunes of the opposition on the president. He combined rhetoric with organization. He did not do half measures.

Tinubu in opposition would not recognize the defenses now offered on behalf of Tinubu in power. He would reject them, loudly and repeatedly, and he would mobilize against them.

Criticism of Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the grounds that his NADECO-era allies or Southwest loyalists no longer protest policies they had consistently condemned misses a basic truth about power. People rarely mobilize against themselves, their benefactors or the networks that sustain them. Expecting otherwise is naïve.

The more useful lesson is not to lament their silence but to study Tinubu’s own playbook when he stood outside power. He exemplified disciplined opposition, coalition building, strategic messaging and relentless pursuit of institutional leverage. Those outside the orbit of power should stop waiting for insiders to revolt and instead organize to displace them. Power is not donated; it is taken. Tinubu has proved that.

How opposition Tinubu would treat President Tinubu, By Farooq Kperogi

Kperogi is a renowned columnist and United States-based Professor of Journalism.

Opinion

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Published

2 weeks ago

April 3, 2026

Trends Admin

Azu Ishiekwene

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Azu Ishiekwene

In many parts of the country, the rains poured down earlier in the week, bringing much physical and psychological relief from the searing heat.

The absence of electricity from public supply channels made it worse. Average daytime temperatures throughout March ranged from 33 degrees to 38 degrees centigrade in Lagos and Abuja, respectively.

Nigeria’s public electricity grid must rank among the most intractable problems any developing country could face. There is hardly anything more constant than the announcement of grid collapse, which leaves businesses and homes seeking alternatives and incurring unplanned expenses while paying for electricity not supplied.

What Candidate Tinubu promised

During his 2023 campaign, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu said that if he didn’t fix the problem, he shouldn’t be voted in for a second term. He must be regretting that statement now. Since the beginning of his administration in May 2023, there have been multiple grid collapses, with the highest number recorded in 2024 at 12. Even when incidents were fewer, sporadic outages have continued. The failure, on face value, is attributed to a mix of technical, structural and administrative weaknesses in the system. But there is more to it in the sense in which it is said: “The more you see, the less you understand.”

So unreliable is the public electricity supply that the Presidential villa appropriated N10 billion in 2025, and an additional N7 billion in 2026 for the installation of a solar mini grid that will effectively disconnect Nigeria’s seat of power from the national grid, bedevilled by ageing transmission lines which collapse repeatedly from sabotage, poor maintenance, and frequency imbalances.

The joke is on us

Nigerians, ever ready to make a jest of their tragic maladies and long suffering, are beaten when it comes to power outages. They are shocked beyond humour. If the high-tension cables were not too high overhead, people in communities through which they run would not hesitate to hang their laundry on them – knowing from experience that the lines are just part of the landscape and are very likely to be without electricity.

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I have seen a video of a masquerade performing on a streetlight pole. Of course, the crowd applauded its invincibility; yet, both the crowd and the masquerade knew better. The lines had not been electrified for months and were unlikely to be for the spell of the circus.

Hope was rekindled at the beginning of the Tinubu administration when news filtered through that the currently embattled former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, had not only produced a blueprint, but was going to be given the assignment of sorting out Nigeria’s notorious electricity sector. I learnt reliably that, as part of his plan, El-Rufai was discussing a $10 billion investment agreement with the Saudis before he ran into rough weather.

The coming of Adebayo

That was how Adebayo Adelabu took the job – a job at which he has performed so disastrously, saying he failed would be an honour. But it’s not his fault – it’s the fault of the President who appointed him and the Senate that cleared him for a job that he was clearly incompetent to perform, either based on his record or based on any hope of redemption. He is brilliant, but the power sector is littered with the remains of brilliant people, among whom he is now a fossil.

His better years were when he worked as an auditor at PWC. He was also the Executive Director/CFO at First Bank, and later a deputy governor at the Central Bank. He may not have been directly responsible for the misfortunes of these institutions at the time, but he doesn’t exactly smell of roses.

In the normal course of things, his banking career should have been a yellow flag. Still, Nigeria being Nigeria, the quota system and political connections ensured that he defied gravity.

Then, in 2023, Tinubu offered him the position of Minister of Power, after his failed attempt to become governor of Oyo State on the platform of the Accord Party. That only worsened our misery. Adelabu will be best remembered for splitting electricity consumers into parallel payment bands that do not necessarily reflect improved services.

The thing is not that Adelabu failed at his job. It’s the lack of evidence that he tried. Mr Dan Kunle, an energy expert familiar with the history of that sector, told me that, “No one is saying a power minister should provide the resources to fix the sector from thin air. It’s for him to provide a solid framework that would create the right environment and attract sovereign intervention.”

Adelabu, like many of his predecessors, is running the power ministry in 2026 with the 1950 operational manual of the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). Yet, even then, when the country had a population of about 50 million, the British knew that electricity was an economic good. To provide meaningful and sustainable service, they had to prioritise not just the key administrative centres but also areas that could pay. That was why, for example, coal was shipped from Enugu to the Ijora Power Station in Lagos.

No roadmap

Adelabu has no roadmap, or if he has one for a population four times what it was under ECN, it’s a roadmap to nowhere. The same old problems persist: gas shortages, moribund plants, infrastructure deficits, massive debts, and frequent grid collapses, limiting supply to about 4,000 MW despite a capacity of 13,000 MW.

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While Adelabu may wring his hands alongside Nigerians when the lights trip off, the sector has been drowning under the yoke of N6 trillion in debt as of late 2025, fuelled by non-cost-reflective tariffs and unpaid bills to both generating and distribution companies. Some of the problems predate Adelabu, but his incompetence has worsened them.

Yet, he still has ambition. Not to redeem himself after his disastrous three years as minister, but to become the governor of Oyo State. Obviously, he believes the reward for poor performance is a higher office. He is so shameless, it means nothing to him that he holds the Olympic record for national grid collapse. It means nothing to him that Nigerian businesses are powered by Indian generators and their homes by Chinese solar panels.

Examples from Africa

Egypt, with a population of 110 million, has 100 percent universal electricity access, supported by a heavy reliance on gas (81 percent) and growing low-carbon sources like hydropower. This ensures a stable supply amid population pressures.

South Africa serves 85-90 percent of its 62 million residents but faces severe shortages. Frequent load shedding persists due to Eskom’s debt, ageing infrastructure, and maintenance issues, despite high per-capita generation.

Ghana reaches 88-89 percent coverage for 34 million people, with hydro and thermal power dominating. Urban areas enjoy near-99 percent access, while rural areas still have gaps and occasional outages.

Kenya hits 76 percent for 56 million, excelling in urban (97 percent) and geothermal power. Rural expansion lags, though targets aim for full access by 2030.

Compared to the countries above, only 57 percent of Nigerians are grid-connected, with outages occurring 85 percent of the time, and poor metering and corruption that sustain estimated billing and inefficiencies.

After watching Adelabu perform so poorly over the last two years on the national stage, I was hoping he would go away quietly, under the shadow of the darkness he has fostered. But since he insists that he won’t leave quietly – or appears determined to stay on – I’m considering a self-appointed mission to drag him to Oyo State to see how he will turn their night into day.

Adelabu’s Power Lines as Laundry Lines

Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.

Opinion

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

Published

3 weeks ago

March 28, 2026

Trends Admin

Super Bowl: Can Africa Spring Up anew?

With a landmass of approximately 9.83 million km² and a population of 334–336 million as of 2025—making it the third-largest country in the world—the United States is massive. It is four times the size of Algeria, Africa’s largest country, and dwarfs Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation.

The United States is a titan among nations. Who knows—perhaps neologists will coin a new term if the U.S. eventually purchases or forcefully takes Greenland from Denmark, further surging its landmass and population. When this massive scale fuses with unparalleled infrastructure, world-class venues, and a vast market, the USA becomes an ideal host for international sporting events with strong returns on investment.

Between 1904 and 2025, the USA hosted one FIFA World Cup (with another to be co-hosted in 2026 with Mexico and Canada), four Summer Olympics, four Winter Olympics, and one FIBA Basketball World Cup. Unlike soccer, which is still finding its footing in the United States—even with Major League Soccer (MLS) having existed for 30 years—American football is the undisputed number-one sport. The Super Bowl—born from Lamar Hunt’s “light-bulb moment”—is the crown jewel. The Super Bowl has become what sociologists call a secular ritual, binding the social fabric of Americans together.

Beyond the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Super Bowl has evolved into a global marketing masterpiece. From the famous 1984 Apple commercial introducing the Macintosh, which is studied in MBA classes worldwide, to the 1979 Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola commercial that showed genteel human warmth winning over fearsomeness, the intentionality of brands going head-to-head with rivals has been a recurring feature of every Super Bowl.

While the USA is always attractive for hosting events, the Super Bowl’s success pivots on intellection that results in ingenious marketing. For the recent Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026, two brands mirrored David Ben-Gurion’s principle of “taking the fight to the enemy.” Pepsi and Anthropic’s Claude entered with an offensive strategy: Claude’s AI ad—“Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.”—was a calculated strike in the competitive AI market, while Pepsi’s polar bear blind test revived the sulphurous rivalry with Coca-Cola. Many companies use their ad slots to build brand identity and equity or announce arrival in the business world.

Where does Africa stand in this Super Bowl business and sports calculus? While developed nations are making groundbreaking launches with chutzpah and creativity from creative shops—all resulting in a participatory economy—Africa’s involvement is largely an on-the-field display of Négritude spirit and ravenous passion.

For Africa, the Super Bowl has become a “badge of honor” through representation. Mohammed Elewonibi, a Nigerian raised in Canada, was the first player of African origin to win a Super Bowl (XXVI, 1992, with the Washington Redskins). Since then, nearly 41 players of Nigerian origin or heritage have won—the most of any African country—including six who tasted victory with the recent Seattle Seahawks: Uchenna Nwosu, Nick Emmanwori, Boye Mafe, Jaxon Smith-Njigba (of Nigerian and Sierra Leonean roots), Jalen Milroe, and Olu Oluwatimi.

Yet, as impressive as African athletes are in making the continent proud, we have blatantly failed to translate that audience engagement into commercial windfalls like the Super Bowl on home soil. It is appalling that most of Africa’s sporting events—the Durban July Handicap, Senegalese wrestling (Laamb), or the Safari Rally—have not fully harnessed the intersection of sports and marketing. Even the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), despite its 3.45 billion cumulative viewers (far surpassing the Super Bowl’s ~125–127 million), lacks comparable marketing prestige. Why are there no global product launches during our matches? Why aren’t AI giants capitalizing on Africa’s tech startup boom?

Africa is being fed celery when it deserves the whole salad. This asymmetry stems from structural economic factors, but the genie is out of the bottle—we must be forward-looking. To turn African sporting events into “goldmines,” we must reinvent the industry, much as Cirque du Soleil did for the circus. Facing declining audiences, rising costs, and fierce competition, it lost its grip on the circus business. Cirque, however, escaped the dying circus business by reinventing it.

By viewing competition through a new lens, Africa can transform massive viewership into unparalleled economic advantage and value. Just as Cirque du Soleil created uncontested market space, African sports must adopt what W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne called a “Blue Ocean Strategy”—creating uncontested market space and making competition irrelevant. Much as we can not compete toe to toe with advanced economies , we should not follow them like zombies.

In their book Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, the authors highlight how companies in “red oceans” fight for shrinking profits in crowded, defined markets. African sports events currently sit in those crowded red oceans. To elevate them, we need disruptive leaders willing to venture into untapped markets, create new demand, and unlock unlimited growth opportunities.

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, in their book The Experience Economy, wrote about the need to transform commodities into experiences. As Africans, we have been able to move our sporting events from the commodity stage to the third stage—service delivery—but the experience stage is the North Star we should aspire to reach.

Our cultures, as varied as they are, define us. Despite dilution by Western civilization, our culture stands uneroded, like the mountains that litter our landscape and serve as a canopy to preserve our common heritage. This means our forefathers took culture into the realm of experience—something we are still grappling with in our sporting spectacles today. For us to make headway, our cultures—already bubbling with experience—must mix seamlessly with our sporting spectacles.

Now is the time to merge cultural events like the Eyo Festival, Argungu Festival, Gnaoua World Music Festival, Osun Osogbo Festival, Meskel Festival, and others with our sporting spectacles—that is the Blue Ocean Strategy. This can only be achieved through close collaboration between leaders in sports administration and marketing professionals selling experiences, and the time is now. As this is done, a line from David Diop’s poem Africa—“That is your Africa springing up anew”—would fill our lips.

The experience stage is the nirvana!

Toluwalope Shodunke

Can be reached via tolushodunke@yahoo.com