Nigerians resort to prayer over things that don’t work. It is good to pray, but we should also ask questions and demand answers and hold those responsible accountable.
THE perennial problem of electricity in Nigeria is one that from all indications defies solution.
Since 1999, people’s hopes have been raised many times that they would have constant electricity, yet they are still waiting for the fulfilment of that promise more than twenty years after.
My joy knew no bounds when the administration of Olusegun Obasanjo promised to end power outage in 1999.
People were happy that a new dawn had come with the birth of the Fourth Republic after a long military rule. They thought at least Nigeria would become a land like the ones they see, hear and dream about where there is constant power supply.
However, up till this time, the efforts of subsequent administrations – of Umaru Musa Yar’adua, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari – have not been good enough.
Instead people resort to buying generators. Even small businesses rely more on generators than electricity, generating jobs for other countries and creating millionaire businessmen and women.
Our industries have collapsed because they couldn’t maintain them running on diesel, thereby contributing to unemployment and loss of hope.
And probably it makes people to want to get out of the country to countries where things work.
Few years ago when there was constant power outage in Abuja, one woman told me that if she had money she would just go to London.
So this is how we have become; even the leaders that have campaigned to make things work, abandoned their promises and rushed to where things work, with constant power supply.
Nigeria generates at its peak 4000 megawatts which is not something great judging by the country’s population of about 200 million.
Over the years the usual excuses for power outage are; low level of water in dry season, vandalism and shortage of gas.
This makes one to believe that if Nigeria is the country that experiences snow, one of the excuses would be ‘the engines have frozen!’
Therefore the latest National Grid system collapse two days ago did not come as a surprise to many, after all this is a critical sector that refused to deliver.
The outage was said to have occurred following voltage collapse in some parts of National Grid.
Nigerians resort to prayer over things that don’t work. It is good to pray, but we should also ask questions and demand answers and hold those responsible accountable.
Not everyone of us can rush to London in order to experience constant power supply.
