Yetunde Arebi
5 June 2008
Lagos — THE current poor electricity supply situation across the country is now a source of great concern to Nigerians as incessant power outage has enveloped the entire nation.
From the South to the North, East to West, the power situation is getting worse as many parts of the country have been thrown into perpetual darkness, some-times, lasting several months.
This situation has, no doubt, caused untold hardship to most citizens, who rely on electricity to get their daily bread and keep life running smoothly.
The on-going enquiry by the House of Representatives has opened lots of suspected cankerworms. But many Nigerians are not optimistic on the outcome of the probe which is already generating mixed feelings across the country.
One year after the take-off of President Umaru Yar'Adua's government, it is the belief of many that there is no obvious solution in sight yet.
Busola Animashaun went to town to speak with respondents who shared their experiences on how the power outage in the country is affecting them, either in their businesses or private lives.
As we celebrate the first year of this government, The Human Angle brings you an expose of the ordinary Nigerian and the problems arising from power outage. It's ironic, interesting and humourous. Happy reading.
Sandra, (44), a hairdresser, business has been grounded:
I'm a mother of three children, my husband is a furniture maker. We both have different shops and our source of livelihood depends heavily on electricity. Things have not been easy for us at all, especially in the last two years.
At the home front, all our electronics have become decorations, they hardly work. I cannot remember the last time I got home to see the television on.
Usually, whenever we have electricity, it is in the middle of the night, around 2.00am, and who is going to wake up because of television at that time? The same goes for music.
My husband loves listening to music a lot. In the past, he used to be the major supplier of music to people in our compound.
The oldies is our favourite, from Ebenezer Obey, Sunny Ade to Fela.
Every weekend, between 7-9am, when we are all doing general cleaning of the compound and our personal cleaning, my husband will be reeling out music from our apartment.
He would, sometimes, bring out one of the loud speakers and we will all be enjoying the music as we worked.
Our compound used to be very lively and most of the neighbours used to envy us. But that is all in the past, we no longer supply music for the compound.
All through last year, I was forced to close my shop when my generator finally packed up.
It took me sometime to cough out the money for another bigger generator, so as to provide a little comfort for my customers.
Without light, you cannot do anything as a hairdresser. Nobody will patronise you once they see that you do not have a generator because there is no way they will go home with rollers in their hair, or with wet hair.
Besides, there are other services that one needs the electricity for. So, things have been generally difficult.
And without work, how can we meet up with our family obligations? There are other extended family responsi-bilities as well as social responsibilities.
How do we perform as parents when we cannot do any decent job for a living? You will be surprised what people have been forced to do in this country just to meet up with their responsibilities.
My experience with officials of the Power Holding Company has not been good at all.
When this problem began a few years ago, they used to give us very costly and ridiculous bills for services we did not enjoy. For a room and parlour with about six points, we would, sometimes, be asked to pay as high as N4,000 a month.
Whereas, in the past, we had never paid more than N500 or so. It got to a ridiculous level that we were told to pay N7,000 and we all revolted.
We thought the landlord was conniving with some unscrupulous officials at the place to milk us, so we sent delegates to their office to lodge a formal complaint.
That time we were told that it is the fault of their computers, and that we should continue to pay the money. That after the computers are corrected, they will put our bill in credit and we will not have to pay until we exhaust the credit.
But who will believe government? They will just eat up the money and tell you that the computers did not record any credit for you. Even if we were running mortuaries, the bill could not be higher than that.
So, we decided to ignore the bill. When the officials came to cut off our supply, the youths in the house and, in fact, the whole street gathered and warned them that they could only climb the electric pole at their own peril.
If they climb, they had better not come down as they would be lynched. When they saw that we were not going to relent, they went away.
After that episode, rumour had it that they returned in the night to tamper with the transformer and so, we did not have light for about a year.
However, I think that has proved to be their undoing in a way. Ever since they repaired the transformer this year (February) and we have been having some form of what you could call electricity, they have not been bold enough to bring the bills.
We are told that the officials too are scared that they will be lynched by residents for bringing what they called fictitious bills since they have not used electricity supply that amounts to anything that would be put in the bill.
What we are suspecting is that they will want to calculate a few months together and come up with some spurious figures. But we are waiting for them.
Government has no plans for the common man. They are all there to steal the money. Are we not seeing them around?
The man that went to the House of Representatives from my Local Government used to live next door to my house. You need to see the transformation that has happened to his life in just this one year in office!
If you have any of them around your area, you will know what I am talking about. We are hearing stories of the type of money that they are being paid. That is besides all the other money they are making on the side.
Is that the government you are asking me about. Everyone is there for what they can get, not for what they can do for this country.
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