These are words from one of the greatest books known to mankind. When the Creator was not happy with the darkness hovering on the face of the earth, He spoke these words, “Let there be light.” Since those words, darkness has become obsolete. Yet darkness is still foisted on Nigeria. From the time the present government took over power, we have hoped upon hope, believing that change has come; succour has come, we were enthusiastic that darkness will torment us no more. I recall that when the present regime assumed leadership on May 29, 2015, the power sector was in its worst shape ever, as the megawatts had crashed to 1,327 due to shutdown of the gas-fired power plants. Ever since, a population of about 186 million has been groping with between 2,000 to 5,000 megawatts, while our South Africa counterpart, with a population of 56 million people has 21,845 megawatts.
Our government has diagnosed several factors militating against unstable electricity supply in the country and several steps have been taken ranging from privatisation, beefing up security to preventing power line vandalisation.
Clearly, the steps taken so far have not yielded the desired results. The question is, “who will take us out of the woods and remove the hood as commanded ab inito ”?
Our wish is stop inhaling the generator smoke that kills us softly. Our wish is to reduce diesel consumption to lessen overheads for small scale businesses. Our wish is for welders, tailors, bakers and artisans and all, to run their small businesses unhindered.
We were continually promised millions of megawatts, yet what we see is darkness still hovering around, with units of estimated bill of torture. The agency designated to handle this keeps giving nothing but estimated bills of heartlessness. Even when light is not consumed, willy-nilly the bill would come. We read on the pages of newspaper that the Federal Government promised to ensure that all electricity consumers are metered. Similarly, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has issued series of ultimatum to DISCOS to meter all their customers. How long does it really take to distribute prepaid meters? Why do they want to continue in the cycle of heartlessness and blame game? The monster staring us in the face is at work, the willow-eyed demon called, corruption.
Concern is growing that the present administration might follow the footsteps of past governments -inability to deliver on stable electricity supply. As I write, most Nigerians cannot afford to constantly run their generators throughout the night. Some have resorted to the use of lanterns in their homes, which is dangerous due to inhalation of carbon monoxide that kills slowly. In some quarters, electricity supply is like food rationing. Rationing has become an inevitable part of electricity supply since the scarce resource is being efficiently allocated. The infuriating part of rationing is that even on days that your street/area is supposed to be on (have electricity), PHCN might switch off your supply yet, at the end of the month the electricity bills will come and you must pay, or risk being disconnected.
Meanwhile, the complaint of the DISCOS concerning metering is that they would have to increase the tariff. Doing this with the state of the Nigerian economy would amount to adding salt to injury.
I hear you say talk is cheap and it is pretty easy to allocate blames here and there. But remember it is said that impossibilities are for losers, without dreams. We can borrow a leaf from countries that have got it right in their power sector. Though we have privatised our power sector, our government should provide clear and consistent regulations, promote efficiency and increase power generation through effective regulators. If the power agencies cannot replace weak and obsolete infrastructures for transmission, network, switches, feeders and control units, it behooves on the Federal Government to use the funding clause as enshrined in the performance agreement.
The minister of Power is a known achiever. We hope before his tenure is over, he will be able to hit darkness so hard that it will not be able to rise to its foot anymore in Nigeria. By so doing, he would write the name of this regime in gold and Up Nepa!, will no longer be heard in our country.
Olusanya Anjorin writes from Lagos.