Last Sunday, we just discovered we couldn’t recharge our electricity token online as usual. Attempts, kept telling us, our meter number was invalid, and my children had used the same number, days before, while I was away. So, we approached a vendor in the neighbourhood and it was there we learnt we needed an upgrade, some kind of revalidation, alongside my National Identification Number (NIN), (the same stuff being required everywhere you turn in Nigeria) at Ikeja Electric office.
In fairness to the service provider, they send regular information via SMS whenever they see need and I would not know if a similar message was sent this time, intimating customers of the development, but in all honesty, I received none. But comments from other customers at the satellite office of the company on CMD Road, suggested message was put out, asking them, to go online and link their meter number to their NIN.
As envisaged, considering our ways of dealing with such situations, the place was literally bursting at the hems when I visited on Monday. As also envisaged, the gathering was rowdy the naija way, because there obviously wasn’t a proper planning ahead, for the disruption that the development, would cause.
While JJC (Johnny Just Come) like me were seeking answers and available information pasted on the wall, especially on how to DIY (Do it Yourself) the NIN connection to the meter number, the place practically descended into chaos, when those who had tried at home, seemingly successful but couldn’t still load their token, stormed the arena.
Come and hear curses oh. Supposed gentlemen in appearance, cussing frenetically in Yoruba and English combo, to the face and very hearing of the IE (Ikeja Electric) staff. Matronly-looking mothers, getting very aggressive and openly lambasting the company, officials and just everyone connected to household power usage in Nigeria.
It was as a frightening as a sad sight!
Those men and women, even old people who you will want to associate with indulging-patience and extreme-understanding, have become highly inflammable. God forbid, any seeming anti-people policy from any level of government, at a time like this, is a tinder. If the angry people I see around on daily basis, in banking halls, market places, worship centres, government offices and the street, are lit by any official moves appearing to target their wallets and increase their hardship, EndSARS, will be a child’s play, because mummies and daddies, will lead this one.
A major sore point for the grieving and cursing customers, was having to spend a lot of money on PMS (petrol) and diesel, to power their generating sets for days, despite having the purchased electricity token, because of the NIN linkage wahala.
Nigerians are roiled, about how the country is being run. The subsidy removal, which has sent inflation to exosphere, is akin to what Ebenezer Obey sang as “kan gun kan gun kan gun, a kan gun sibi kan (a vexed issue would be resolved somehow). The policy, which upon reflection, has turned out to be unwisely launched, will either make or mar the Bola Tinubu administration. In a sense, it is good that the administration started with a defining decision and purpose, but whether it was the right step or not, would soon be seen.
Right now, everything seems wrong about the policy and other economic reset steps of the administration. Things are currently so bad that former President Muhammadu Buhari is beginning to grant obviously-arranged television interviews to beat his chest about the achievements of his government, widely believed to have bankrupted Nigeria. His recent media engagement, for a reticent fellow, who would not even speak to Nigerians as President under very compelling situations and practically refused to engage with the local media for his eight years in Aso Rock, is more like using the Tinubu administration to catch cruise as the street will describe, mocking someone assumed to be better than you, but, doing very poorly.
I won’t blame the former President. Tinubu’s men like the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu (I personally believe he is too political for that office), have been trying to use the Buhari failure to justify their own failure. So if the fight now is about who is a bigger failure, then the former President has all the right, to defend his own failure, as a challenge to the Tinubu administration, to also defend why it is dropping so badly in the performance and perception index.
What the government is doing right now, isn’t working, including their messaging. It is not enough to assure the people that all gonna be well. They have heard that literally all their existence, from one bad government to worse successor. Beyond the absurdity known as palliatives, and maybe the Market Moni the wife of the President is about to start distributing, it appears this administration has no short term policies to relieve people of their pains. That in itself, is bad enough. Now, just assuring without concrete pointers that Tinubunomics will deliver miracles in indefinite future, is hare-brained. Nobody will buy it and obviously countless Nigerians aren’t, including government minions and minnow vuvuzelas, parroting the kamikaze talking points from Aso Rock.
Before now, when young people demonstrated their impatience that has come to be associated with impressionable phase of maturing, the older generation was always there as a calming balm, assuring the younger ones that things always get better with patience, if hard and smart work, isn’t unhindered. Now, Asiwaju is losing the restrained generation which makes the optics very bad for his government.
I agree that his government needs time to clean the Buhari rot. And it is even good that Asiwaju is the one doing the cleaning and receiving the sticks for not doing it well, and fast enough, as expected. He literally thumped his chest during the famous Abeokuta campaign outing that he made Buhari president after the former man, failed thrice on his own. Well, since he brought the Daura General, whose appointees decimated the very few things that worked under Goodluck Jonathan, the President, should also see to the cleansing of the sewage his predecessor left behind. Right now, Asiwaju is doing a poor job of it. He is also slow in reducing the stench. Thankfully, deodorizing, in the guise of palliative, isn’t working, so nobody would come and call dog a monkey for us.
Days back the President said he should find a way to the history book as a lion-heart who took painful decisions for assured future for the country. Maybe he should wait for the results first, before counting his medals.
Yoruba will say, ibere ki se onise. Even God is all about fruits (results), not just green leaves.
When the results are there, he won’t even have to beg for a Guinness Record. History will preserve his name and memory. The time we are in now, requires more of hands on the deck and less of boasting tongue.
The President is vicariously liable for the Buhari mess. Eni ba gbe aro wa, la gbe aro lo. Won’t interpret.
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