We, the electricity-deprived

This is our story; the story of how we have been feeding on empty promises of improved electricity through some modern magic called megawatts. In my part of Lagos, we are electricity-deprived. We have never received uninterrupted power supply for 24 hours. And I have lived here for some 22 years now. Each family is forced to provide its own power needs. I have three sources of power supply – a diesel generator, a petrol generator and inverter. The expenses of running them is better imagined for a man who has never been a drug baron, a political operative or a government contractor.

Some of the residents in our area have I-pass-my-neighbour generators that generate more noise than light but are tolerated in the spirit of common suffering shared and endured.  And many more miss this luxury and simply endure the darkness and the disarticulation in their sense of modern, improved life.

I am sure we are not alone. I am told that because we occasionally get electricity for something like two hours in the morning, we are much better off than families in some other parts of the former federal capital who only see the shimmering light and envy the well-heeled in Banana Island, Lekki and other choice areas where electricity hiccups are not permitted, given the social, business and political importance of the residents.

I find it painful that while we suffer from electricity-deprivation in the 21st century, Nigeria chooses to relish its role as the big brother to some other African countries. It sells electricity to Togo, Benin Republic and Niger Republic. We are talking of 300 megawatts that our country supplies them to massage its ego as the big and rich brother. But big brother now wants to add Senegal to its list of international electricity customers. I wonder if this is what the Igbo call business acumen.

In Agila, we have a saying that if you do not have enough you do not have excess to shave off. Doing otherwise stands common sense on its head. It should be the ambition of a country, even an African giant, to generate and distribute electricity to sufficiently meet the needs of its own people before it would consider giving thoughts to being the electricity generating capital of West Africa. That, as Thomas Paine would put it, would be the natural order of things. The big and embarrassing irony here is that those countries to which we sell electricity are less electricity-deprived than we are. See what the misguided sense of business sense does to a country with a warped sense of big brotherhood?

Failed promises by successive federal administrations to let the light shine in the country have made Nigeria the biggest market for generators in the world. Our astute business men and women import generators of all sizes from Europe, Japan, Korea and India into the country. They used to be called standby generators. Not any more. They have become the main and permanent power sources for all our electricity needs. I am surprised that the students of climate change have not done a study on what the toxic fumes from generators in our offices and private homes contribute to the global warming. I am sure that if they get down to it, they would be surprised by their finding – and indict our country.

The only noticeable consistent progress in our energy sector must be the change of names from ECN to NEPA to the current Power Holding Company of Nigeria. In 2013, the federal government brought in the private sector and commercialised power generation and distribution in the country. Heard of Gencos? You are current with the news. These are the companies that were brought in by the government on November 1, 2013, to solve our electricity problems. Five years down the road, our electricity-deprived agony has neither abated nor shown any evidence that thanks to them, our journey out of darkness into light has begun.

I am afraid, matters could get worse for us in our part of the country. We are looking at the grim possibility of getting even less electricity than we do now. The Gencos are complaining of liquidity squeeze. In plain English, they do not have enough money to carry on. The Punch of December 30, 2018, quoted Joy Ogali, executive secretary of association of power generating companies, as saying that “the current liquidity crisis we are facing, due to non-payment for power that we have generated and supplied has reduced the Gencos’ ability to perform their obligations, thereby threatening to completely undermine the electricity value chain.”

I am sure you do not need me to interpret that for you. But in case you have some problems with what is called undermining the “electricity value chain,” it simply means no money, no electricity. We could not have a more heart-wrenching notice of more bad days ahead than that in my part of the Lagos metropolis. This too would certainly undermine the ability of individuals in their own electricity value chain, as in there would be no money to fuel the generators. Good bye light, welcome darkness? You got it.

The fact is that the privatisation of this sector critical to our national economic and industrial development has been quite disappointing. The Gencos have always complained of lack of money. I have often wondered if these shrewd business men and women went into it without sufficiently doing their home work as to how long it would take before the returns on their investments begin to roll in in huge quantities of Naira and no kobo.

We are in a dilemma. If the private sector cannot do the magic of improved electricity generation and distribution, it is impossible to think of what other options we have. I know what this means for me and the people in my neighbourhood. We will continue to live the dual life of half yesterday and half today. We live in the hope of a better tomorrow that was promised us yesterday. And we live in the electricity-deprived present and given to expecting to hear the occasional whistle that serves notice that the Gencos sometimes wake up to the common sense that electric wires are intended to carry electricity to our homes and offices. As a smart Alec poet would put it, there is some joy, sure, in this sort of existence that none but the electricity-deprived know.

Tell you what. I have formed the association of electricity-deprived Nigerians to push for our common interests as a group. We will vote for the presidential candidate with the best plan for uninterrupted power supply. Watch out. A presidential candidate who talks of megawatts is a no no. We want light, not megawatts.