Light matter goes N16bn

16bn Power Saga; Obj, Buhari generate more heat than electricity. This headline by a newspaper sums it all up, in the same week that we were told it would take 15 years to solve the nation’s metering problem.

Then I ask, who exactly did this to us? are our ancestors just collecting kola and aromatic schnapps and not doing anything about our situation?

JEDC stands for Jos Electricity Distribution Company, but they largely distribute darkness and bills. Ibrahim, the JEDC marketer allotted to me, brought this bill that had N12,000 and I went into Nigerian frenzy: why? how? when? what? which? and where? Explain: was it the bill for the year.

I know that the consumption had decreased for a while; there were now fewer persons at home, less time spent. I could not understand the ‘astronomical’ increase for a service that hadn’t been there in the first instance or at best been ‘dancing disco’ when available.

So, after both looking at the bill properly, we saw the error and the bill was actually N5000. Still at that, all I needed to do was a mental calculation to arrive at the fact that for an entire month, I had seen barely cumulatively ten days of electricity.

It’s almost a year now and I am yet to see the analog prepaid meter that has if anything defaced many parts of Jos hanging dirty on poles. All these Obasanjo and Buhari amala talk could be classified as collateral pains if after all there is power; but instead, we are fed with the political gimmick of  “…there is power for an average of 16 hours across major Nigerian cities” by Fashola, the power minister, just like the then Ngozi Iweala, Madam Minister for Finance.

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While Nigerians pay for services not delivered, it is ironic that only government officials experience uninterrupted electricity. Most Nigerians applaud the fact that PHCN is dead, but many a Nigerian now crave for its resurrection, as the new DISCOS, at best, have failed in the electric dance.

Whether it is $16bn or N1,bn we are still in the NNPC’s ‘there is no gas, we have supplied, and they did not pay’ era. Despite the best of efforts, most Nigerians do not understand the whole privatization, unbundling or fondling of power by those concerned.

We are an impatient nation, but is this electricity matter not one that should have been done and dusted? Why is it we still suffer high voltage (electric gadgets bear the brunt, no one is held liable), and then low voltage 50 low you can barely see. So there is electricity but it cannot power a bulb.

The transmission company people are doing loads of hard work but truly it amounts to nothing when there are many questions and no answers. I agree that we are a difficult people. It is probably only in Nigeria that PHCN owes NNPC for fuel supplied, and NNPC has not paid for electricity supplied and state houses owe utility bills, while citizens that have not paid bills in years have power as long as there is power to spare.

I must state that solution does not lie in Chinese, World Bank loans or private partnership but upon a strong political will by both leadership and those governed.

Prince Charles Dickson, [email protected]