Don’t bother any further to believe government officials or Nigeria’s Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) propaganda script coated in the garb of truth and correctness over the many gains of the planned power sector reforms.
Which reforms do you expect from a dying sector that has remained a bottomless pit and a huge hole in the nation’s financial heart.?
Ask yourself again:Has any known reform in the power sector not brought more darkness,pain and hopelessness.?And,are the so called reforms not unveiling one bitter truth:the past has become better than the present in our power supply history.?Check it i out,we have had more to less power supply with each passing day in the last 10 years…and still counting!
Look around you,whether in our cities or in seedy neighborhoods,all that welcomes you is intimidating darkness;our cities have been turned into 19th century villages where far apart,you see a few rays of light piercing through from stone age hurricane lanterns.This frightening darkness is now our daily spectacle, no thanks to our all- almighty Discos who are living true to their sobriquet as dancers of pains and death.
Again,as the power supply situation worsens by the day, the blame game among TCN ,Gencos and Discos continues ,as none of them takes responsibility for their perfunctory and sloppiness in service delivery.
The stories for no power supply change with the speed of lightning,this moment it is “low gas supply’,the other hour ,it is either the Gencos are doing turn around maintenance or a huge inferno erupted along the transmission lines,….and so many other unconvincing and despicable tales .
For instance,in Lagos,neither the Eko or lkeja Disco tells you why in a whole week,your neighborhood gets light for only one hour.
Even feelers one gets from residents who reside in areas ‘elevated’ to Band A,meaning higher tariff,swear than they hardly get two hours electricity supply in two days in the past one year.Again,who is deceiving who?
You keep asking and wondering, for how long will Nigerians continue to be taken for a ride by those who offer paid for services ?
Yet ,at the end of the month you see these Discos field men going round to collect money and gratification from unmetered customers for services not truly rendered.
Then with all these underhand deals,you don’t have to look far to know while the Discos are still declaring jumbo profits annually.
But how will we continue this motion with movement reforms in the power sector,and still think we can ever catch up with the rest of the world in terms of industrialization and economic independence.Now is the time to genuinely address the issue of the nation’s failed power sector rather than playing the ostrich and politicizing it.
The present administration need to rejig the power sector privatization policy to allow for efficiency and quality service delivery or else,this rigmarole to nowhere will continue till only God knows when.
*Nwagboniwe l Emmanuel,a Media Practitioner,wrote in from Lagos.*
