Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has done it again. After “stomach infrastructure,” Nigeria may have a new entry for the political dictionary: “Fayosis”, the theory that darkness, especially in communities without electricity, fuels sexual activity and population growth.
I once likened Fayose to Nigeria’s Donald Trump, not for ideology but for style. Both speak raw, unfiltered, and somehow turn the most ordinary policy brief into national debate. Fayose’s latest did exactly that.
Speaking in Abuja on August 8, 2026, after his inauguration as Chairman of the Rural Electrification Agency, Fayose blamed poor electricity for early nights and rising rural populations. “Why you don’t address this issue of electricity? The people at that level have no alternative attraction. After 7 o’clock, it gets dark there. Everybody is engaging their wives. And the population simply becomes double. The simple problem is because there is lack of electricity.”
With electricity, he argued, there would be “nightlife. Recreation outside your wife.” And just like that, a speech on power became a seminar on sex, heat, and demography.
Is there any science behind “Fayosis”? The short answer: maybe, but not the way Fayose put it.
Human sexuality isn’t wired to a light switch. Researchers agree that sexual behavior emerges from a mix of biology, psychology, relationships, and environment. Hormones like testosterone, estrogen and progesterone matter. So do dopamine for reward, and oxytocin for bonding. But scholars from Helen Singer Kaplan to Rosemary Basson have shown that desire, arousal, and behavior are not the same thing. You can have one without the other. Desire can even come after intimacy, not before it.
Where Fayose may have a point is in “opportunity.” Behavioral science tells us environment shapes choice. If there’s no TV, internet, football center, or night market after 7pm, people go home earlier. They spend more time with a partner. In that narrow sense, darkness and boredom can create space for intimacy.
But here’s the twist Fayose didn’t mention: the same darkness that gives privacy can kill romance. In rural Nigeria, no light often means no fan. The room becomes an oven. Instead of cuddling, couples chase breeze. Instead of blankets, it’s wrappers and outdoor benches. Darkness can push people out to compounds, trees, and street-side gist, not into the bedroom. That communal night under the stars is what many of us who grew up in villages or small towns remember most.
Psychologists also note that boredom can drive people toward excitement, but sex is only one option among many: food, sleep, talk, drink, or simply sleeping early. And population growth is far too complex to pin on PHCN. Fertility depends on marriage age, education, contraception, culture, economics, and health, not just how dark it is at night.
Ironically, electricity itself cuts both ways. It can create nightlife and distract couples. But it can also bring education, information, and reproductive health access that may reduce fertility.
Perhaps the best lens is the person-environment model: the same blackout produces different behaviors. One couple sees privacy. Another sees heat and goes outside. A third hosts neighbors. A fourth watches a movie on a charged phone. The darkness is constant. The response is not.
So “Fayosis” will likely never make it into a psychology textbook. But as political comedy, it works perfectly. Like Trump, Fayose takes one blunt sentence and sets a whole country arguing.
Electricity can light a room, but it doesn’t dictate what happens in it. Sometimes darkness brings couples closer. Sometimes it sends them outside. Sometimes it just makes everyone sweat and angry.
In a country where power is unreliable, Fayose may have found the one thing that never goes off: conversation.
Bagudu Mohammed is the Founder, Alternative Perspectives.
Web: https://alternativeperspective.onrender.com
Email: bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com | Phone: 0703 494 3575
