Nigeria is a system with all sorts of malfunctions. And if African traditional beliefs are anything to go by nowadays, those who choose to do things from midnight down to the wee hours of the morning must have something to do with witchcraft or sorcery! If you were to stretch that a little further, you are likely to come to the belief that there are quite a lot of that in this country – I mean witches, wizards and sorcerers! Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that so many things happen under the cover of darkness, including starting government meetings so late into the nights that they end up finishing in the wee hours of the morning – sometimes, many times?
It is, indeed, at such meetings that those very many dangerous decisions are taken that seem to affect us all negatively and put us in a bind from which we never seem to be able to come out – at least by our own very selves! And it is not really an Obasanjo joke to add to that, “I just dey laff”, because in truth this is not a laughing matter. So, there I was seated in front of the television watching Channels Television top news programme, the Ten O’clock News, and up comes a community somewhere in Kwara State, gathered, I suppose, in front of the local office of Ibadan Disco, the successor to Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in that region, protesting against the wrong end of the stick they were getting from the Disco in terms of billings and power supply.
“They send us crazy bill, even when they do not supply power,” one elderly woman spoke to the camera!
“Ha! That’s not fair,” I could hear myself exclaiming, right in front of my television.
Now, I’m wondering why I said that’s not fair! After all, it’s a familiar road well travelled. And with everything familiar, there is something similiar. PHCN, and NEPA before it, was known to act in that elixir mode, lording it over consumers of electricity, because they were a national monopoly. Now, with regional or geographical monopoly created for investors with supposedly trained eyes and understanding for private sector behaviour in management, the stories coming out of some places are not quite as expected. All of this may just boil down to the issues of efficiency and capacity, but there is yet something darkish about some other aspects of the things we are seeing on this familiar road.
And here’s the dark side of a behavioural pattern. On this day, you decide not to go to bed early. Let me rephrase. On this day, you find that you have a lot of paper work that you need to get through with; so you decide not to go to bed early. Of course, you have to stay up to get the paper work over with and because this is going to be overnight, you need electricity to make this happen. Well, these days electricity is supplied either through you own generation (via your generator) or through your now regional or geographical supplier known as a Disco (never mind, it does look like a discotheque nowadays – because they must be dancing and doing nothing, hence the suffering they put you and me through!). I bet a lot of these operations are automated, I mean the switch-on and switch-off that reminds you in this country that you are beholden to a power supplier. And this supplier makes no apologies about it – after all there is no competition.
Once the 10 O’clock news is over, you decide to really get serious with your paper work. Your computer is up and running, but you find that you are burning fuel as you can hear your generator, even though it has a good noise reduction apparatus, bellowing outside. But this work you must do, and you try not to get distracted by all the private-power-generating noise coming from yours and the neighbours’ generators. You are getting on with it at 11 pm when those working at your Disco, Ikeja Disco, decide that it is time for you to get some power supplied to you, never mind that you had paid for this service in advance. Now, lawyers, doesn’t this provide grounds for legal action, if not by you alone, then maybe a class action lawsuit. You know, I am thinking as I write this that if you pay for something in advance, it presupposes that the seller has the good or service and would deliver to you accordingly on demand. What’s a prepaid service if it leaves you at the mercy of the seller after he or she has collected your money? How you wished this were a truly normal society where law prevails and where when you go to the law courts your case won’t be held down by technicalities and a dubious legal system for years! It’s just a wish and, superstitiously, the more of us that wish it, the more likely it could happen! So, join me in wishing.
With public power back, you go to change over from your generator to public power. That done, you return to face your work. You are bent over the papers in front of you; but you are not 20 minutes into doing that when public power goes off again. You look at the time and see that you are heading to the midnight mark. This is work that must be done this night, so you go over to get the generator back on again. You need the light. Even though you paid Ikeja Disco in advance to supply you power, it still thinks it owes you no obligation after collecting your money. This is strange to you, because your understanding of advance payment presupposes guarantee that what you have paid for ahead of delivery will be delivered to you when you need it.
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This might well be one of the main matters we have to deal with in this environment. However, on this night when you are beginning to get furious that you are not able to get the power you have paid for in advance, your uneasiness is being made worse by whoever is on duty tonight and has responsibility for switching ON and switching OFF power supply to your area. And that’s because as soon as you have put on the generator and been back to continue with your work, the person switches public power supply back ON! Hmmm! You are now beginning to wonder what must be going on at this Ikeja Disco control room tonight. Is this a case of witches and wizards and sorcerers having a meeting at this power Disco?
It gets more interesting for you when you discover that as you spent the next three hours working, you find yourself having to go do change-over for up to 15 times because someone or some people at Ikeja Disco with itchy fingers just couldn’t move themselves away from the ON and OFF buttons. In doing that they caused me distress, which is a good reason to sue were I to be in the United States or Britain, where the system allows you to claim damages for such unwholesome behaviour. After all, I paid them in advance, didn’t I? Is that not what they call pre-paid metering? What are the regulators doing to rein this bad behaviour in? You ask them, not me; I mean the regulators.
PHILLIP ISAKPA
