Electricity as a Product in Nigeria

Product Under Review: Electricity in Nigeria.

Situation Report: Let’s start with the product of all products. Let’s review the product called electricity in the Giant of Africa.

In Nigeria, and indeed in any country of the world, what daily utility can be described as the product of all them products if not almighty electricity! There, I said it, “almighty”; but let it be clear that I wrote it with the small “a”, in order not to let it forget exactly where it belongs. I say almighty because, in this industrial and scientific age, a country without it is a ‘dead’ country. It is one of the two man-made almighty sine qua non of modern times, without which life today might not be worth living. The other one is petroleum, the black gold. They are like the proverbial chicken and egg. Which one should come first today?

In Nigeria, electricity represents an unrepentant monopoly, monopolysed by the people that call themselves government, since the year 1950 A. D., and one has reason to believe that as long as the devil’s companion called politics continues to exist, a million years from now, electricity will still remain the mirage that it is today in this country. That means that we might not see any steady electricity supply in Nigeria till the end of the world. Let politics prove me wrong.

We all know the history of electric power in Nigeria and we all know that this product can be readily available without a day’s failure if politics so wills, but unfortunately, politics is the art and practice of making a problem that can be solved in one hour last as long as a century, for by so doing, politics thrives and its practitioners are guaranteed continuous worldly gains, which would disappear if the problem was solved. And the so-called common man prays on his knees everyday for the problem to go and the solution to come, but it has not come for more than sixty years now. Is it true, is it possible that a small group of powerful people can keep 200 million Nigerians in darkness just to continue making profit from the import of generators? Do you, as a Nigerian believe this? I don’t know.

The power giver in Nigeria used to be called Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN, 1950-1972), then it became National Electric Power Authority (NEPA, 1972 – 2005), then it became Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), which has been liquidated and scattered to the four winds of the earth by a privatisation abracadabra. Now, I don’t know the name of what used to be Nigeria’s NEPA. See what I mean when I say I still prefer NEPA? Nigerians never cared when it became PHCN anyway, and kids still shout, “Up NEPA” whenever the miracle of light occurs in our homes, and “Down NEPA” whenever the miracle changes its mind. Every Nigerian has one or two tales of woe to tell about electricity generation and supply by this monopoly. We all know the long story, but our business here is not to point fingers or sling any mud, just to bring heads together and find ways to survive in the face of product unavailability.

Once upon a time, there was an almighty State monopoly in Nigeria called Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL). It operated the only land-line telephone system the country had during its time. You could not get a telephone line without them. Multiple rooms were stacked full of files of applications from Nigerians desperately awaiting the allocation of their telephone numbers, but big NITEL kept saying that lines were not available, for years on end. Long ago when one Naira was as strong as or stronger than one US dollar, It cost as much as =N=250,000 in official fees and kickbacks and palm greasing to get one telephone land line in Nigeria, even with the advent of the so-called 090 (naught nine naught) CDMA mobile telephony that later appeared.

2001 A. D.! God in heaven gave Nigeria the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). As soon as the first three companies that got the license went into operation and Nigerians saw a light in the telecom tunnel,  big NITEL printed banners and handouts and leaflets and flyers that said: “Have you been applying for a telephone line for a long time without success? For =N-14,000 now you can get your land line in less than two weeks” I saw one of such banners in the offices of NITEL Apapa Lagos in 2001, two weeks after I bought my first GSM line and handset from MTN Saka Tinubu Street in Victoria Island, and I could not believe what my eyes were seeing. So, I asked myself repeatedly, for all those years, NITEL had land lines wasting away while they kept telling us there were no lines? Well, the rest is now history and we all know that NITEL is not almighty anymore, and we all have telephones now, including the primary school kids waiting playfully for the driver to come take them home after school and the baba n bola who carts away your rubbish every morning. That is good news and that is the way it is supposed to be.

My multi-billion money question now is, what the Nigerian authorities did to the telephone industry in 2001, why can’t they do the same thing to the electric power industry now? Why can’t they license private companies to generate electricity and distribute to Nigerians when evidence has shown that the almighty monopoly we have now is a big failure? Well, something in that direction was done a few years ago, in 2014 precisely, when PHCN was privatised and split into multiple electricity generating and multiple regional distributing companies. Today, there are 23 generating and 11 distributing companies managing the power sector in Nigeria, but the sad story remains the same, multiple blackouts everyday, just like in the days of NEPA and PHCN. Why sell to private investors if they do not have what it takes to solve the problem?

So, the current big ‘NEPA’ does not give us uninterrupted electric current. When that current mercifully comes, you go out and put off the generator that’s been running. Before you come back into the house, NEPA is gone again, you go back and put on the gen again and before you come back into the house, NEPA comes back, and goes and comes and goes and comes. In my street, it goes and comes, 7 to 15 times between morning and night. That is on the days when it’s your turn, because the product is rationed for most Nigerians. A few lucky ones get it everyday, but it still goes and comes. I honestly wish anybody who knows to tell me this: Are all those blackouts a day the result of a human being flicking a switch on and off or are they caused by genuine electrical faults? Pray to God that the transformer that serves your area does not have any problem, otherwise you would be looking at three to six months of blackout, unless you all raise the money to replace the damaged transformer.

Paying electricity consumers buying a transformer for an electricity company is like paying passengers buying a tyre for a commercial bus driver half way through transportation and, at the end of the journey, are you giving me my tyre back? Nope! You buy the the transformer and its all theirs and you still pay for the power you consume. It happened in all the years of NEPA and PHCN and its happening today. To make things worse, most consumers in the country have no electicity metres. they give you what they call Estimated Bills. So annoying! it is like, you come into my petrol station, I fill your tank and I say, I estimate your tank has swallowed ten thousand dollars worth of fuel, pay up. And you are not allowed to dispute that.

So, what is the alternative for you and me the common man? Candle? Kerosene lamp? Petrol generator? Diesel generator? Inverter generator? Solar Power? Wind Power? Nuclear Power? My advice is for every Nigerian to take the bull by the horns and do whatever you can to create your own PEPA (Personal Electric Power Authority). Of course, millions of Nigerians already use generators. It is said that Nigeria uses more petrol and diesel generators than any other country in the world, and the most affluent ones have been using solar power and other more expensive alternatives, but there are some bad tales to tell in respect of the quality and genuineness of those imported power products. Good thing, Nigeria Product Review is here to point everybody to the right direction.

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