Lagos — "Up NEPA"!!! That was a family friend's daughter who is barely 2 years old, screaming at the top of her lungs when even unknown to her, it was the generator in her father's house that had just come on, as against PHCN bringing back power. I found it amusing that at such an age, she already knew those words, especially since she can barely string a sentence together.

A couple of days later, I ran into an older friend, who was pregnant with her third child and we started talking about how Lagos had been suddenly defaced by the constant rain in these past couple of months, making everything Governor Fashola had done so far, look like child's play. Our conversation; as is the case these days when Nigerians meet, moved from the unbelievably bad infrastructure, through corruption and our dying educational system, to some of our hypocritical values. She told me that her kids were in England for the summer and that she was seriously struggling with having to raise them in a society like ours. She could not understand why a little kid in Nigeria, would be learning to speak and unlike her peers, whose first words are 'Mama' and 'Dada' or 'I love you', what she learns to say first is; 'I beat you o' (I will beat you). While it is understandable that the child may not necessarily grow up to be violent, she found it very disturbing that a child would pick up such a violent and unfriendly line as their first thing to say. It definitely speaks volumes of our society.

As we spoke, I remembered my friend's daughter and wondered how many kids across Nigeria actually grew up with their first proper phrases being 'Up NEPA'. For example, I was born before the popular 'Thriller' was shot and I grew up shouting 'Up NEPA'. Is it not scary that many years after 'Thriller' became a hit and broke records, with Michael Jackson living through so many more hit singles and albums as well as scandals and even dying, children in Nigeria are still shouting 'Up NEPA'? Is it not even scarier that these days, the shouts of 'Up NEPA' are heard less often, not because children do not know how to shout it out anymore, but because PHCN has become so bad that they are more like an endangered species, seen and heard from at very strange times, even if at all? Why did things suddenly start to get worse in the country instead of better? Why do we get promised regular power supply by every politician who wants to get

voted into power and nothing happens when they get in? What happened to the theory that we have more power in the rainy season because the dams get fuller and why then do we not have any power at all in the middle of July? If those in charge are being sincere with their promise to light up Nigeria, why then does it seem so difficult to fulfill when supposedly smaller and less endowed countries around us here in West Africa have almost stable power, while we cannot even boast of uninterrupted power for as long as 12 hours? Is it true that we do not have power because the government and a cartel that benefit from diesel and generator sales would rather let things stay this way than fix things, thus the need to continually lie to Nigerians? Most of all, why does our dear President not say anything to us other than the rhetoric of promising us 6000 megawatts of electricity by the end of the year? Why are Nigerians made to suffer for all of this?

I live in Lagos; a city supposedly built as a model for the rest Africa; a city internationally recognised as one amongst the very few mega cities of the world. While we all know that Lagos sadly has been defaced over the years without anyone giving thought as to how it would survive in the long run, the sort of neglect its residents have been made to endure in the last couple of months is, to put it mildly, wicked and unacceptable. I am speaking about Lagos here, not because its case is the worst in Nigeria but simply because I live here.

I sat down sometime last month and started doing what is the simplest form of arithmetic; adding up numbers. I needed to know how much I spend on the average to have regular power supply in my house. Now, I stay at home for just about 12 hours every day. The other 12 hours are spent in traffic and also trying to achieve what should be a normal task of earning a living. In those 12 hours which I spend in the house, the generator is mostly on because I can thankfully afford the petrol to put in it. On the average every day, I have to buy at least (emphasis on the 'at least') N1000 worth of fuel. With that, I can watch television, quickly iron my clothes for the next day and alternate between putting on just one air conditioner in the house and my fridge.

However, the N1000 price goes up on days when my brother and I decide to be greedy and put on both our air conditioners and the fridge for a taste of anything cold. That automatically means the diesel generator would have to come on (Yes; most people cannot afford to have just one generator anymore). The budget could go up by as much or even more than 100% just for that little luxury. Nevertheless, I still decided to do the math with my N1000 estimate. It meant that at the end of every month, I would have spent about N31,000. As huge as that may seem, it pales into insignificance, when compared with what the annual budget will be; N366,000. That is money that I can spend on buying a tokunbo car, renting an apartment, giving tens of children a scholarship in my village, going on a vacation, starting a business or even just saving it for myself.

But the weird part is that, the estimated N366,000 is only so small because I do not live in a house with a wife and 4 kids, a house help, 2 cousins, a driver, my mother and the gate security. Some homes have their budget running into millions of Naira as a result, and with that in mind, one can only imagine how much offices and companies and even small businesses have to pay to keep going. It does get very annoying because we all know that no matter how much we are made to pay if power were constant, I would never have to pay N31,000 every month. Even if the power was generated from diamonds! Why do we have to pay so much to generate our own power (besides generating our own water and providing security for ourselves)?

In the last 2 months, I have had power from PHCN for an average of 48 hours each month; yet, they still have the audacity to bring bills every month of as much as N4000, up from the N2,300 I used to pay some 4 years ago when power was even more available. Is the N4000 bill not worse than what the so called 'yahoo yahoo' boys are doing on the internet? What sort of day light robbery could be worse? And yeah, before I forget, the N4000 bill amounts to N48,000 annually. Add that to my N366,000 bill at the end of the year and you have a bill of N414,000. Nothing can be more ridiculous than that. Not even in hell would it cost that much just to enjoy a breather from the heat!

Sadly, my case may be that of the guy complaining because he had no shoes when someone else had no legs at all. There are still a lot of Nigerians who cannot even afford to own a generator or buy the fuel with which to power them regularly. Refrigerators have become mere cupboard shelves for keeping plates and books as they almost never come on. Mosquitoes enjoy themselves while feasting on blood without any hindrance. It gets even worse for them because their neighbours probably all have generators so they are made to live with the noise from them while they try to sleep in hot, dark rooms.

My neighbour has a boy who was studying for the just concluded WAEC exams. One day his father probably could not afford to buy gas, or the generator went bad and there was not enough money or time to fix it. As usual, PHCN had not blinked for days and the poor boy had a paper the next day. He sat on a stool outside his house and put on the headlamps of his father's car so that he could use the light to read. He was there for a long time with his hands to his ears because there were generators sounding loudly around him (mine included) and he needed to concentrate. I went to bed and he was still reading there with his father's headlamps, and thankfully I was not there the next morning to know if he had run down his father's battery as a result.

To cap it all off, over the weekend, we got the news that PHCN staff were going on strike to protest their poor wages and welfare package. A lot of people found it laughable and understandably so. I, on the other hand, understand why they would want more money because as far as we know, they are not the reason for the poor (or no) power supply. They report to work every day and so need to be paid. Those who should provide power are those who have refused to do so and yet pay them poorly.

Thankfully, that strike threat seemed to be the tonic a lot of Nigerians needed to speak up. The internet and social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have suddenly become powerful tools for the ordinary man to speak up. The uproar following the Iran elections were the most recent the world saw the power of social networks and everyone took notice. That set an example for a lot of people, as they woke up to the fact that they actually had a voice. Nigerians seem to have seen that too. In the last week, a 'Light up Nigeria' movement has started online and it has caught on like wildfire even amongst foreigners. Everyone has a story to tell and sadly it is the same story, one of darkness.

Things have gone on for too long this way, and while we acknowledge the fact that things will not be fixed overnight, we need to see that things are getting better and not worse, as they seem to be these days. The idea that things will get better without us seeing a real effort to make it better must stop. We need to really start working for a change.

We are used to having successive governments that do not listen to the people and so we will continue to talk about it until we see signs of progress. Things have gotten so bad and now the only way to go should be up. Let us start making that climb and other things will fall into place. Nothing can be so difficult as to take 49 years to achieve. If not now, when? When my children hear their children too shouting 'Up NEPA'?? God forbid!

Please Light up Nigeria!!!

ANSWERS ANYONE?

Why are there still no signs that we are going to host the U17 FIFA World Cup?