Witches, Demons, And Power Outage By Leo Igwe

It was shocking to read that a
former University Vice Chancellor,
Prof Nebo attributed the cause of
power outage in Nigeria to ‘witches
and demons’. Witches and demons?
Nebo made the declaration at a
screening session on the floor of the
Senate. According to him, ‘“Some
highly placed Nigerians believe that
when there is outage, it is caused
by witches and demons.’ I mean
this is incredible. Nebo did not
specify who these so called ‘highly
placed Nigerians’ were.
“If the President deploys me in the
power sector’, he declared at the
screening session, ‘I believe that
given my performance at the
University of Nigeria Nsukka, where I
drove out the witches and demons,
God will also give me the power to
drive out the demons in the power
sector.”
It was a great disappointment to
read this ‘amatuer sermon’ as
Nebo’s diagnosis of the cause of
power outage in the country and
how he testified to his achievement
as a University Vice Chancellor.
Attributing the challenges in the
power sector to witches and demons
is utterly meaningless. It is a clear
indication that he had no idea of
the problems at stake and what the
solutions would be.
The screening session was really an
opportunity for him to demonstrate
his knowledge of the issues,
articulate these challenges in very
clear terms, and then tell the
Senate Committee how he would
address them. But he blew away the
opportunity. Nebo did not give any
clue at all of how he would tackle
these problems in the power sector.
I mean what does driving out the
demons from the power sector
mean? Is he a faith healer? Was he
being nominated to be a minister or
an exorcist?
Definitely, this is not a kind of
statement one expects from an
intellectual and scholar on how to
go about addressing the critical
challenges in the power sector.
Nebo does not give one any hope
that he has some meaningful
contribution to make in this
important sector of the Nigerian
economy.