by Tunde Fagbenle

It is complete disrespect under the part of those who govern us. They act as if they owe us no explanation and no apologies for not providing us electricity as we should have. It is complete disrespect to us that those who govern us to make promises upon promises, raise our hopes with time schedule they know is meaningless and just move on uncaring.

The Nigerian is the most disrespected of any country’s citizens by its leaders that I know in the whole wide world. And I have been to some countries and heard of others in my time. Here, the people are treated with disdain. Those who lay claim to having been voted into power by us literarily assume that “power” to disrespect us and treat us as if we don’t exist; or if we do exist, then only to be tossed crumbs for which we must be ever grateful.

How else can one take what is happening to us right now with electricity supply? If I am not mistaken, this is the worst that it has ever got to, the lowest ebb since pre-Independence days of Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). For weeks and months now, many parts of the country have been in total darkness, those that are lucky to get some power often wonder why they bother at all for the supply comes in miserable spurts and stops, and hardly for more than an hour of the day or night. One feels like crying.

The sad part is that we, the masses, have ceased to worry about it; we have been so pulverised to resignation. We just go on with our lives the best way we can. Those who can, resort to self-powering by generators. But in the last many weeks, petrol to power even these has become scarce and expensive beyond the reach of the ordinary man. Hitherto rationed self-powering is now further rationed or abandoned. Many in villages and towns have returned to the olden days of primitive oil-and-wick or candles for light.

Many a factory is groaning or has shut down for simply not being able to cope with the cost and trouble of power generation. Many small businesses that need even little amount of power to subsist have ceased to exist. Many people who have intention to start small business have shelved such plans, thus raising the level of unemployment and insecurity.

But what do our leaders care? To them in their high sheltered and pampered places of work or home, this is all baloney. What light? They have light 24/7 and they know nothing about how it happens. They are sheltered from the knowledge of how their generators are fuelled. Indeed, some are so privileged to have special supply lines from the national grid system that must not fail!

It is complete disrespect under the part of those who govern us. They act as if they owe us no explanation and no apologies for not providing us electricity as we should have. It is complete disrespect to us that those who govern us to make promises upon promises, raise our hopes with time schedule they know is meaningless and just move on uncaring. In saner climes, even here in Africa, announcements are made in advance to apologise and alert the citizens of expected power cuts – at which places, and for what duration.

But here we get fed with sickening excuses: if it weren’t insufficient rainfall, it would be too much rain and burst dam! If it weren’t problem of how to conduct the overabundant gas that’s being flared away daily to required power stations, it would be some mysterious reptile blocking the power engine from turning!

When, recently, the long overdue step of unbundling the behemoth power monopoly and inviting private investment into the sector in a bid to turn it around the way our telephony system has been dramatically transformed, a whole new set of excuses suddenly arose: those companies (DISCOS) that bought into it have suddenly discovered that there is more to our power configuration or disfiguration and challenges than meet the eye! We, the people, are told to exercise some patience and give the DISCOS some months to find their dancing feet! It is as if in the rush to cheaply sell off the obviously lucrative public power asset to cronies of government and their favoured companies, due diligence was sacrificed.

Now with almost a year gone and having run out of excuses, our government doesn’t even bother anymore. They owe us no excuses or apologies.

Something must be really wrong with us as a country to be at this point in the 21st century, gifted with so much power-generating resources (hydro, gas, fuel, sunlight, etc) and yet be beset by incessant power failure, or indeed complete lack of it in many places. Does this agitate the minds of our leaders? Does it anger them sufficiently to vow to slay the demon as if their lives depend on it?

But I must be quick to add that Nigerians must share of the blame too. We allow, nay we invite, the disrespect on ourselves. It is a servile mentality borne more of evil cunning and sheepish self-interest than respect for power. I have never seen any people more brilliant, more resourceful, more enterprising, and yet more docile than Nigerians.

The time has come for serious “Citizen Action” to put a stop to the rot. We must hold our leaders accountable for the responsibility of the office they occupy and of whose perquisites they enjoy. If those in leadership are disturbed from enjoying what they have deprived us; if we march on their offices and homes and demand they give us power or quit; if we descend on the offices of the new companies that have cheated us to acquiring interest in the sector without the capacity or capability to meet assured deadlines, and say to them that “our mumu don do”; then, and then only, will we be taken seriously.

This disrespect for us must stop!

 

PS: After I wrote this piece I gathered from listening to one of the DISCO operators during the week’s 7th Lagos Economic Summit that there is lack of infrastructure (laid pipes) to conduct the gas to power generating points, not to talk of homes. And so any hope that our power problem could be over soon is a pipe dream (no pun intended)! We have years more to pay for many decades of lack of visionary leadership with the political will. And that’s saying it the way it is!

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.