In the last week of January 2022, I surveyed the socioeconomic environment and concluded that the best way to hammer (so as to have life in abundance) was to join SARS (see How to Hammer in 2022: I Will Join SARS!!! 24/1/22) Before I arrived at this decision, I undertook feasibility and viability studies of various emergent businesses, including masquerading, pastor-preneurship, the sale of vintage apartments (to be adopted by UNESCO as heritage sites), and even joining the original SARS (State Anti-Robbery Squad). The SARs I had planned to join were the ‘State Aided Robbery Squad’, a band of ferocious and rapacious robbery gangs established, empowered, and protected by the state. The author and finisher of the concept is Pastor Tunde Bakare (I have not heard much of and from him in this period of acute TINUBUlation), who expounded on it in a speech he delivered on 25/10/20 titled ‘Building blocks of nationhood; a blueprint for a new Nigeria.’
Building upon that his treatise, I hereby propound a theory of the duality of SARS. Anybody, except the proverbial visitor to Jerusalem, knows that we live in a rentier economy, in which people make obscene money by looting the public patrimony through the instrumentality of various tiers of government. Budgets and contracts are padded, waivers harmful to the economy are granted, monies are paid to ghost contractors for ghost contracts, people align with outsiders to bill the government excessively, estacodes for foreign tours are paid to people who are resting in their villages, ghost workers are paid and even promoted as and when due, and people who resigned years previously are paid salaries. These are all variants of SARS, but they are the macro-SARS; our money is achieved at and from the top. In this case, ALL of us are collective losers, but nobody lost the money personally. So, the criminality is very far away, and most often, those involved in the lootocracy will come down at our level and use the money to oppress us, like the benevolent thief who stole an elder’s money inside a bus and ‘compassionately’ paid his fare when the teacher was stranded. Examples of macro-SARS include budget padding at federal and state levels, subsidies, fuel imports, TAM rackets wholesale looting at NNPC and NNDC, and acts of “Emefieleism” (printing money that develops wings and flies away). Even today, “Cardosoism” has replaced Emefielesim because money is still being printed in bounteous quantities.
“These are all variants of SARS, but they are the macro-SARS; our money is achieved at and from the top.”
Then who has “Micro-SARS,” in which the state empowers and protects people and institutions to steal directly from the people without any compunction and in broad daylight? In this case, the institution or individual undertaking the robbery is known, and the people from whom it is stolen are known. The individual, or a small group of individuals, is openly defrauded; they experience the loss and the pain, but because the robbery is aided by the state, there is not much you can do. That is where NEPA, PHCN, and those who dance disco in the dark (without lights) or with our lights belong. Filling stations also do that to a small extent, but they cannot come to your house to rob you. It is when you go to their business premises that you are robbed through misaligned metres or refused to sell whenever prices fall (which is rare), but they will implement any price increase before it becomes operative. Oluomo and his gang are also involved in micro-SARS. The case of NEPA and its offspring is so bad that it is an economic offence to disturb them when they are stealing from you. They also operate with unapparelled impunity. I will give you a tip of the iceberg. About 25 years ago, at Dele-Orisabiyi Street, Okota Lagos, Nepa people disconnected my light even though I was not owing. They claimed that they could not identify those who were owing (we are just 3 in the compound). If NEPA that installed the light did not know who was owing, how did they expect me to know? Anyway, I used my car and blocked the street, preventing them from leaving. They had the audacity to accuse me of an economic offence and threatened to send me to the Economic and Miscellaneous Offences Tribunal!
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Anyway, NEPA and its offspring are the greatest players in the micro-SARS arena, and in that arena, estimated billing is the quintessence. I will start with a small experience I had at Ijebu Ode in 2021. ‘ I came in from Igbo-Ukwu on Sunday, 15/1/21, and learned from the landlord that our transformer had been vandalised and that the cables in and around it were missing in action. Both of us agreed that an enemy would have done this and that the enemies could only be those who understood the dynamics of, and had access to, transformers. Two days later, the street levied every house and every individual so as to revive the transformer. One of the managers (or “damagers”) of the DISCO told my landlord that if we did not contribute for the refurbishing, then we would stay in the dark ages. When he asked the “damager” about the loss of income to IEDC, the man unabashedly replied: That does not concern me! It is the statement of someone with a salary mindset; an owner-minded fellow would not have said so. Of course, they reap where they did not sow’.
Now coming to my recent experience that birthed this treatise, my family has a ‘branch office’ at the Ogbor-Hill axis of Aba: a two-bedroom flat with a medium-sized fridge and two standing fans. The estimated bill rose from N10,000 to N13000 to N17000 to N20000 to N20k+ monthly, even when there was a light lockdown. In the last three months, the bill amounted to N80000+, but the issue is that for two months (May and June) when nobody was in the house, we paid a bill of N50000+! N50k electricity bill for a two-bedroom house for two months when it was under lock and key!!! What type of state-sponsored criminality will surpass this?
You buy poles, wire, transformer, metre, pay for labour hire, and transport the ladder, and they just wait for you with a matchet at the men (the end of the chain) to slice as much as they like from your pocket. And they disconnect your light and seize the wire (which you bought with your own money) when you do not pay early enough. And the state would provide cover for such outright theft! No; this is more than thievery; it is robbery and brigandage. NEPA, PHCN, and Discos are the most visible members of the Micro-SARS. Incidentally, as the DISCOS are dealing ruthlessly with us, the National Electricity Regulatory Commission announced some time ago that Togo and others did not pay anything for the power supplied by Nigeria! We must dismantle this criminality.
