By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.

                  19-10-2024.

I do not believe in consecutive happenings of events, what is otherwise called ‘coincidence’. Why should our electricity line be ‘falling’ only on Friday, when electricity companies’s workers ‘are not working’? That is what the staffs say whenever our representatives go on Fridays to complain of a problem.

The staffs however, work on weekends to take bills to customers and say that the company prefers cash payment to bank payments. Ours is supposed to be a band A, which attracted 100% tariff increase from the previous rate. I now pay N30,000 per month, from the N15,000 previously paid to the provider. This simply means ‘more money from, and less electricity’ for, us residing at Daura street, Kofar Kaura Layout, Katsina.

Still, the electricity is not there for customers in my area, as boasted by the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, who claimed that 40% of Nigerians now enjoy up to 20 hours of electricity daily, with the current generation of 5,500 megawatts for the ENTIRE country, in a statement reviewing his ministry’s activities in the last one year. 

I said ‘boasted’ because 64 years after Nigeria had its independence from Britain, electricity remains a luxury, and out of the affordability of many citizens. A very insignificant number, compared to what other countries with less than half the population of the nation of nearly 230 million people, produce. South Africa, with a population of about 65 million people and Egypt, with a population of 110 million people, each produces millions of megawatts for their respective country.

They also give another ‘excuse’ for taking off the light, or not supplying it altogether. They ‘accuse’ the rains of causing havoc with their installations, especially transformers or their lines, or both, whenever there is a rainfall. This time that the rainy season has ebbed considerably in this part of the country, it remains only Fridays to extort the customers.

Fridays are always looked upon with apprehension, or even trepidation, by some people in our area, because the electricity generator or the electricity line, would most likely ‘fall’, so that when we go to lodge a complaint, we must ‘gift’ the staff N3,000, or they would claim ‘not to be working on weekends’.

Anyway, this is the third consecutive Friday in which our line opted to ‘fall’, causing us untold misery because of the natural atmospheric heat, especially at night, and the unaffordable cost of petrol in the country, which makes the product out of the reach of many Nigerians, and operating the now dormant generators, impossible in many homes.

The first and second Fridays, our street remained without electricity for four days, and today Friday (18-10-2024) we are living in fear of another ‘blackout’, whose duration we cannot predict. But for the light from the system being used to write this article, darkness would have been my companion, as the almighty electricity provider has done what it does best; providing the usual darkness, instead of light.

It is no wonder that the films, caricatures and cartoons of ‘NEPA’ workers are NOW a hit with directors and viewers alike. In at least four of the languages used in the country, the staff of the electricity suppliers are portrayed as monsters, whose sight is hated with a passion, because it is believed that they are there to either present a ‘darkness’ bill or to cut and carry with them the connecting cable to the electricity line.

The Federal Government also has repeatedly announced that it was illegal for any electricity vendor to demand the customer to install or pay for the installation of transformers and it was illegal to cut and take away the wire connecting a customer to the power line. But these instructions are obeyed in the breach in the place I come from.

Even Very Important People (VIPs) like the Bauchi State Governor, Senator Bala Mohammed, voiced their disappointment with the poor performance of the power ministry, urging the President to reverse some of the biting economic policies his administration has imposed on the country, policies that include the hike in electricity tariffs, without commensurate increase in performance.

Speaking in Abuja yesterday, the governor lamented that “despite the exorbitant hike in the tariffs which most of the people cannot afford to pay”, the service offered by the electricity providers left much to be desired.

Many Nigerians are finding their nation a place where survival is for the top government officials at the three tiers, the politicians in the assemblies at the national and state levels and, the business people who live on the result of their hard-work, only. Many of the rest of the citizens are progressively becoming desolate, despondent and hungry because of the severity of the situation in the country. This group of people are incapable of surviving without the assistance rendered daily by the good spirited individuals in the business community.

The wealthy business individuals FEED hundreds of thousands of people all across the country. Feeding remains the most important part of survival for every healthy living organism on the face of the earth, and human beings need it more than any other creatures.

Never experienced in the country in the past, the severely biting economic policies of the present administration appear to be a foreign import from the bad books of the World Bank, whose Vice President, Mr. Indermit Gill, at an Arise Television organised programme, called the Central Bank Governor (CBN) by name and congratulated him for the country’s seriously biting (operating) economic policies, and urged him to continue in the same direction for the next 15 years, after which he believed that the light would appear at the end of the tunnel for Nigerians. But the CBN Governor was alleged to be one of Mr. President’s

worst appointments, an allegation made on a television programme, by a lady who called herself the ‘daughter’ of the President.

At the time most Nigerians barely manage to survive, its leaders are living life to the fullest, and also ‘donating’ hundreds of millions to groups or associations, as a gesture of their supposed goodwill. The Villa is also not exempt in the charade.

Recently, the First lady ‘donated’ a whopping sum of N1 billion to the Awolowo University of Ibadan, and two First Children (Nigeria for you) were in Maiduguri, where they ‘donated’ N250 million, as assistance for the Borno State flood disaster.

Donations coming from the business person in the country is quite understandable, but coming from the government, representative of the government or person closely connected with the government, are NOT donations, by whatever definition. The money or item being ‘donated’ belongs to the people in the first place. Whether by a serving or former chief executive or those associated with them, the so called donation is anything but that.

The word ‘donation’ is a media-created word, coined by (obviously) obsequious journalists, whose goal is to impress and please the ‘donor’. But the truth is that, you do not donate to the beneficiaries whose Commonwealth was illegally taken from them. 

May God make life better for every Nigerian, not just the leaders or those close to them or the fat cat politicians or the business people, whose assistance to many needy, makes life more bearable.

Malam Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.