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Sad tales of Nigeria power supply

By Christie Doyin
Sometimes I wonder who cursed us or how we got where we are today. Honestly, it didn’t just start. It dated back to over three decades ago or more but facts remain that it didn’t just start today.
The problem of Nigerian energy supply has remain an ulcer, nay a cancer that has held the nation by the jugular and nothing could be done to save the nation.
The Nigerian energy supply crisis refers to the ongoing and unresolved failure of the nation’s power sector to provide adequate electricity supply to Nigerians for domestic uses in their households and for manufacturers and industrialists to enhance their productivities.
What makes the story more sordid is the fact that so much money has been pumped into the sector by successive governments, without anything positive to show for all the efforts and monies invested.
The worst part of it is that the economy is abysmally saddening and is plunging so rapidly that everything that has to do with the economy are in sorry states. It is a known fact that the socio-economic development of any country is dependent largely on the availability of and accessibility to electricity supply.
A time it was when Nigeria was a growing economy, so much that it was renowned to be harbouring some of the world’s largest deposits of coal, oil and gas. Indeed, a time it was when Nigeria was known as the giant of Africa and the continent’s largest cocoa and oil producer.
Today, the story we hear daily is that the national grid has broken done, or sometimes, they need to do some shedding, when actually, less than 30 or 40% of Nigeria’s households and population are connected to the national energy grid whilst power supply difficulties are experienced around 70% of the time. In the last couple of weeks, some areas only enjoy power supply for between 4 to 5hours of the 24 hours per day. Often, the most hours of power supply per week in some places is even less than 8hours.
In some areas, it is even less while several communities across the country are not connected at all to the national grid. It is that bad and terribly sad that a nation that hitherto has so much crude and bogus economic power and known as a leading force in the comity of nations can no longer pride itself as a force to be reckoned with, in anything that could be considered strong enough to place it at par with emerging economies not to talk of developed nations.
Sadly, unlike when we were growing up, power cuts, disruption or problems were announced ahead and if there were reasons to suddenly disrupt at any time, apologies were announced on radio and television by the ECN or NEPA authority but now, neither power cuts nor restorations are announced.
An average Nigerian home depend mostly on petrol or diesel generators due to lack of supply or epileptic supply from the national grid. As a matter of fact, what we have is a complex energy supply crisis that seems to defy all solutions for decades.
Most Nigerian businesses and households that can afford to do so run one or more generators to supplement the intermittent or none supply.
This results in expensive but poor output and supply of agricultural, industrial, mining as well as in human output and therefore impede economic development of the people. This is despite the hike and outrageous charges for power not supplied nor used.
My mother, an 85 year-old woman who has no fridge, freezer or any electronic, except a television she rarely watches, and radio she does not know how to tune, is being given a bill of between N6000 and N8000. For crying out loud, how they come up by that bill still baffles me, especially considering the fact that she lives alone and we have written series of letters to complain and ask for adjustment to no avail.
What makes it worse is the fact that Nigeria is one of the country with the lowest electricity consumption on per capita basis in the world that apart from the imbalance in the supply and demand in the country. And imbalance in the distribution across the country.
There have been series of allegations and counter allegations in the sector that from the Minister for energy, to the lowest cadre of worker there, no one has been able to come out to tell us whose fault it is or what has made it impossible to get it right.
Explaining and resolving the problem(s) in the sector’s situation has become such an herculean task which no one is willing to take on. One keep wondering if anyone can ever get it right in this country when it comes to the power cum energy sector. Perhaps the solution is to embrace the solar energy as found in most other emerging economies across the world.
*Doyin writes from Ilorin via e-Mail:[email protected]

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