Mourning our powerless country

Nigeria’s Federal Government has likened the gross lack of electricity power supply in most parts of the country to a war situation. The country’s Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, gave the explanation and said the “war” was caused by “a combination of factors.” If Minister Aliyu could not readily explain the cause of the war other than saying that its cause was “around gas supply,” he is quite right and welcome. Some of the recorded internecine wars were caused by ridiculous and inexplicable reasons, just like the electricity situation in Nigeria. In spiritual warfare, you must be highly fortified spiritually. When you are contending with principalities and powers, when you are locked in a contest with powers that are higher than the ordinary, the holy books tell us what to do.

Barry Andrews, in his article published by History Magazine in its December 2013 edition, chronicled six wars that were fought for really absurd reasons. Andrews’ work entitled ‘6 Wars Fought for Ridiculous Reasons’ was about “facts on history’s most preposterous conflicts.”

One of such wars was the one fought over pastry between France and Mexico. Pastry in its lowest form of meaning includes meat pie, doughnuts, chin chin and puff puff. In October 1838, King Louis Philipe started a war because Mexico refused to pay a French chef compensation for his pastry restaurant that was looted during a riot. The cause of the French-Mexico war was that simple, according to Andrews, but in about two months, 250 soldiers had been killed. General Santa Anna, a popular Mexican hero, who came out of retirement to lead his country’s charges against the French, lost a leg in the conflict.

Another bizarre war listed by Barry Andrews in his work was that between Greece and Bulgaria. A stray dog triggered that monumental international crisis. Of course the tension generated by the second Balkan War was still in the air, and it boiled over when a Greek soldier was shot when he chased after his runaway dog and strayed across the border into Bulgaria. This was in October 1925. There was a battle cry by the Greek and soon, they invaded Bulgaria and occupied many of their communities. The quick intervention of the (then) League of Nations averted the Greek’s planned shelling of Bulgarian cities. Other examples of wars caused by stupidity abound.

Wars come in different forms and are fought for different reasons. Nigeria’s electricity supply war has come upon the country in a gaseous state. The entity we are battling is gas. Although Nigeria is blessed with such enormous amount of gas reserves, and exports the commodity along with crude oil, but we lack it for domestic consumption.  Thus, our war with gas supply for electricity supply should fall into the category of the wars Barty Andrews wrote about, even though ours is not an international conflict. Gas cannot be seen as we see crude oil and one of its refined products, petrol. Thus, going by the minister’s submission, we can conclude that our war with the supply of electricity is against gas, a ghostly entity, which has turned to a principality in our confused grope.

Zainab Kuchi was Nigeria’s Minister of State for Power. When she held sway at that ministry, she was credited with the copyright of saying that the problem of electricity supply in Nigeria is spiritual, that evil spirits were ruining the country’s efforts to attain sustainable electricity supply. Madam Kuchi was also quoted to have said that that sector of our economy needs exorcism. “We must resolve to jointly exorcise the evil spirit behind this darkness,” she was quoted to have said. Now, there are more reasons to believe in what she said.

When she said that, people like former governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, were waving away the enormous problems in that sector. Fashola and his vocal friends dismissed the work people like Professor Barth Nnaji did in that sector. He said generating electricity and other things around its use were a child’s play.

On March 25, 2015, some days to the general election, at the 7th Annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium, Mr Fashola had said: “Power generation is not rocket science, it is just a generator. So just remember and imagine your ‘I better pass my neighbour’ in 1 million times its capacity but in one place. So if you can make that size of one kilowatt, you can make a power turbine of 1,000 megawatts. So with all the billions of dollars that have been spent, the story is that we still live in darkness. Our government lies about it, but to tell you very confidently that we do not have power because power is difficult to generate, we don’t have power because incompetent people are managing our economy. As one of my friends fondly calls them, our economy is being managed by gbatueyos. For those who don’t know what gbatueyo is, it means amateurs. Thank you.”

Soon after, Fashola served out his second term as governor of Lagos State and he was appointed Minister of Power, Works and Housing. Expectedly, he rolled out his action plan aimed at achieving ‘Incremental, Steady and Stable Power’. Then, the drumbeats changed. By the turn of the new year, there was nothing obviously different about power supply, but one of the first things we got as Nigerians was a tariff increase. It came in February 2016. The increase in electricity tariff caused national outrage. People were enraged then as they still are now because there was no electricity for which a higher tariff was imposed.

The Daily Trust newspaper lampooned Fashola in a report of April 29, 2021, after the power sector he headed for about 42 months between 2015 and 2019 could not rise to the occasion as millions of Nigerians had expected.

Fashola is no longer the Minister of Power. He might have forgotten all that he told us could be done about power with a wave of the hand. He is not answerable to us. However, it is fit to remind him that we have had two power grid collapses in 2022 already. We are not counting those of the previous years when he was the minister and after. Yet, we are not in a war?

The struggle to privatize the Nigerian power sector started in 2005 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo and this was finally achieved in 2013. Then the problems started. “A man is not complete until it is married. Then he is finished,” so says Sam Levenson. Nigerians believed that when the power sector goes the way of privatisation like the telecommunications sector, our problems in the power would disappear. But, like marriage a la Sam Levenson, see where we are.

It is now normal to hear that power grid has collapsed in Nigeria. Nigeria’s electricity power grid’s frequent collapse leaves the country without electricity. It leaves us in darkness. We are a very spiritual people. Consider the connotations of being without power (powerless) and being in darkness. We are powerless and helpless, even electricty generating sets can no longer save us. We are in a war with principalities. God save your people.