Abuja — The country is experiencing an energy crisis; there is no gas anywhere, and if you find it, you pay through the nose for it. Really scary because we all know that in Nigeria what goes up does not come down. Interestingly President Yar'Adua seems bothered; he has approved all sorts of plans, from those on planning, regulation, distribution and pricing to what he calls the master plan.

My take is simple and short, whether we agree or not we should go back to our old kitchen, the ones that used to be outside the main house, made of mud brick and thatch roofs; there is no kitchen like that, those kitchens often took time to construct.

We went wood searching, picked up many but it never finished and every home was sure of more than enough for firing the biggest pot in the house and the food produced was most times, not just delicious in taste but spread its aroma around the neighbourhood. Many of our mothers were married to their husbands just because of the dexterity they showed with the 'firewood-cooked food'.

I am making this recommendation because this whole energy problem is becoming a plague that has no solution. This is not the first time we are developing a plan; we like big names, this new one is called Nigeria Gas Infrastructure blueprint, and the idea is to stop the importation of cooking gas, make it available, we are even told that by the end of next month the current price would drop.

My brother, in Nigeria month 'no dey end' and everything will be tackled at the end of the months, and each month comes and goes with 'no show'. The painful thing about our energy problem is that we have no alternative. We cannot afford cooking oil popularly called Kerosene and we cannot afford cooking gas, sources of energy that we have in abundance.

If the powers that be do not complain about the storage facilities, they find shelter in international price. We were grudgingly buying the regular 25kg cylinder for approximately N2,200 depending, now at N5,000 the gas is nowhere to be found in the market.

The multiplier effect is that, most kitchens in the capital city have exploited that, and you best imagine the cost of a decent plate of food. A lot of us are tired about the whole mess that this nation has driven itself into.

Many of us can understand that you do not have something and then you suffer lack for that commodity, but what could be the possible explanation for us lacking the very things that we have so plentiful.

Someone asked me if the gas too is stolen by pipeline vandals, or do they have to refine the thing abroad and again sell at international price to us? Besides, it is only oil price that increases and drops, and that one we do not even see the benefit.

Even the gas that is flared or according to my Warri brothers, the smoke 'wey dey waste' is enough for our domestic need. All the statistics in the government's new plan does not make sense to the ordinary man if he cannot benefit from the availability of the commodity at an affordable and appropriate price.

There is hardly any nation that is not doing one thing or another for the overall happiness of her people, but Nigeria is the very opposite; they deny us everything, and in that case, I say authoritatively let us go back to our roots, food cooked with firewood does taste better, so let the gathering of firewood start with immediate effect.