Hurricane Nebo: Power Sector’s New Spirit

[Shola Sholaz]

There is a particular local saying that when a child is crying and pointing in a particular direction, it is either the mother or father is there.
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When the Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Ositadimma Nebo, stood before the Senate earlier this year to declare that he was going to exorcise the demons in the power sector, it immediately made headlines in the media.
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Of course, it had to, because this line of thought was completely new. Nobody before him had openly pursued it. If they contemplated it, they never brought it to the public space. That Nebo has blazed this trail is not surprising.
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He possesses what many of his ilks lack, or overlook. It is strange that many people who have gone through the academic mills and acquired the first-grade credentials he has, soon abandon the most essential and crucial part – God. Many of them even begin to delude themselves and commit the most atrocious infamy and sacrilege of declaring with their mouth that there is no God, while others, at best, pay half-hearted heed to His existence and dictates.
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That, of course, is one of the major fundamentals the former Vice Chancellor of two federal universities, is bringing to the table, which, rather than serving as a footnote, is likely to define his era in his present job and from there create the template for Nigeria to leapfrog into the future of greatness that has become so elusive in the past, but which everybody, including its enemies, believe is waiting right at the next bend.
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It was the same talisman that Nebo used to end the many years of rot at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, UNN, which, before his arrival, was already gaining notoriety for its version of being a theatre of war and bloodshed that many of the nation's tertiary institutions have become in recent years, due to students' cultism. Who didn't hear that the menace grew so high that Nebo's predecessor, Prof. Ginigeme Mbanefo, was actually kidnapped and for some days, became game for the unconscionable elements? Who didn't hear of the killing of 15 students in the university in 2003 or how a former dean was butchered thereafter?