Nigeria Content Online

Whether the problem
is generation, transmission or distribution, the effect is the same; no
electricity power: Whether the damage is at Egbin, Kainji, Oji River,
Papalanto, Akangba or the local sub-station or transformer, it is all
the same, we receive no light.

Who gains from this
no light matter and who loses? All of us lose except a very few;
manufacturers, industrialists, students, patients, video-centre
operators, artisans, battery chargers, tailors, hairdressers,
cosmetologists; All of us Nigerians and Nigeria lose. Industries and
manufacturing concerns abandon the large Nigerian market and move to
tiny Ghana where they manufacture their products at greatly reduced
cost and from there feed the Nigerian market. Jobs are lost, government
revenue diminishes. We just can’t compete with Asia in terms of
production because whereas labour is cheap, electricity power is
impossibly expensive, as we all individually have to generate it
ourselves.

In the first
category of “winners” are: diesel sellers, generator manufacturers,
vendors and repairers, and transformer sellers. In the second category
is the staff of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).

The diesel sellers
range from the smaller time dealers that make it impossible to navigate
through the streets of Marine Beach in the Apapa and Ajegunle areas of
Lagos to Tin-Can Island to the major importers of the product and
owners of the Tank-Farms, up to those who have been able to buy over
whole corporations. This latter group is peopled by several Big Boys
led by one white-apparel wearing no-value-added Forbes 500 billionaire
friend to the president who gives the impression that he knows what
others don’t know.

They all are
wonderful specie of human beings tremendously rich on the misery of a
nation. They have created a nationwide monumental demand for a product
that if not for PHCN and their demonic antics would be largely
unattractive and irrelevant to our existence. But then, what kind of
dark power have these people contacted that has enabled them to
successfully feed fat on the misery and backwardness of entire
generations of a nation, nay a race?

Several long-term
Nigerian based foreigners, including Indians, Lebanese, Greek and some
Nigerians, lead the generator manufacturers and sellers group. Their
names and products include Marapco, Jubaili, Leventis and P.Z. They
largely manufacture their cheaper and poorer genre Rolls Royce and
Perkins generators in Asia under license of European manufacturers.

The ubiquitous Igbo
trader who is at the lower end of the generator seller market supplies
incredibly poor quality Chinese manufactured very cheap generators that
promise much but deliver little. They are in the business of cutting
corners. A 5K.V.A generator is really 3K.V.A and a 10K.V.A is really
6K.V.A. No standards whatsoever are maintained and the Nigerian
Standards Organization watches. Nearly every urban Nigerian family has
one. In some compounds there are up to 20 generators going at the same
time. Some families that can hardly pay their children school fees are
the proud owners of at least two of these dead-on-arrival generators.
Finally, we have the repairers who include Mufu, Baba Kamoru and the
host of small time repairers who litter the streets of Ebute-Metta and
Ladipo, the headquarters of scrap.

As for their
accomplices and co-conspirators PHCN, the organisation that still
enjoys a monopoly on the provision of power but unashamedly neglects to
do so, it is essentially a cursed organisation whose staff benefit from
not providing any services. A couple of weeks ago they actually had the
effrontery to withdraw their services and go on strike. This was a
wonderful opportunity to invoke the toughest of sanctions on them for
an offence analogous to treason because ordinarily electricity is
essential to the life of a nation. This wasn’t done and the PHCN
Workers’ Union now realises that they can hold the nation to ransom and
cripple the privatisation exercise. They need to be watched! Have you
noticed that we have been struggling for the last twenty odd years to
increase generation beyond 3000 mega-watts? Anytime we go beyond 3000,
major damage occurs. In many parts of the Lagos Mainland, there has
been total power outage for an unprecedented period of nearly four
weeks. This time the problem is not low levels of water at Kainji or
gas supply at Oturugo or Papalanto but simply sabotage at Akangba. They
claim that the two transformers that feed the station have broken down.
For four weeks? The truth is that the network has simply been sabotaged
to maintain the demand for diesel.

Experts say that if
the outage continues for a week or two cumulative demand of diesel will
move our white apparel wearing yacht loving friend of the president
into the Forbes top 100 richest men in the world.

But nobody is fooled, one day, monkey go go market …… Agu Imo is based in Lagos.