A NATION IN PERPETUAL DARKNESS
Means of livelihood are being eroded due to the energy crisis
Today, Nigeria is buffeted by a mix of nationwide blackout in the power sector, scarcity of petrol, as well as prohibitive cost of diesel and aviation fuel, otherwise known as Jet-A1. What started as unending weeks of petrol scarcity engendered by the importation of unwholesome quality product has snowballed into an energy emergency. In the process, public and private institutions, businesses, and households are bleeding as they feel the pangs of this crisis with no solution in sight. Without a doubt, Nigeria is currently facing a serious energy crisis.
The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed gleefully announced recently that the federal government has successfully phased out electricity subsidies, which means customers are now paying cost-reflective tariffs. If, as her counterpart in the Ministry of Power, Abubakar Aliyu said the problem is due to water level at the hydro plants, what has happened to the generation from our thermal plants? What is the status of the intervention between the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and Siemens? Where is the problem: generation, transmission, distribution? Nigerians are not really interested in the megawatts of electricity generated, wheeled, or distributed. They are not interested in blame games either. They just want regular power supply.
With electricity currently farther from the reach of most consumers in the face of scarcity of petrol and diesel, there are evidently no further alternatives available for Nigerians to power their generating sets either for domestic or commercial purposes. About a year ago, a World Bank report indicated that over 78 per cent of electricity consumers in Nigeria enjoyed less than 12 hours of electricity supply daily, a report the federal government repudiated. The situation has since worsened.
The current administration has been in office for about seven years. This is enough time to have changed the sordid trajectory in the power sector. But what Nigerians are treated to every day are megawatts of excuses. Billions of dollars were sunk into the sector by previous administrations. More have since been expended by the federal government without any turnaround. The World Bank alone aided the country’s power sector with the sum of $1.25 billion within two years. What results have we gotten from the Power Sector Recovery Programme, and others under the present dispensation?
The Power Generation Companies (Gencos) under the Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC) claim that the power supply situation in the country was worsening because they were owed over N1.6 trillion since 2013. The Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) has countered this claim, stating that only companies with active gas supply and transportation contracts are paid for unutilised capacity. But the Minister of Power has been singing discordant tunes over the embarrassing darkness in the land occasioned by the collapse of the national grid. At one time, he had blamed power outages on the drop in water level in the hydro power stations and recently he cited maintenance problems and gas shortages, likening the crippling power situation across the country to a war situation.
Indeed, what Nigerians are going through currently is like a war situation. Means of livelihood are daily being eroded due to the energy crisis. Big and small businesses, artisans and households are either frustrated out of existence or subjected to unbearably unimaginable operational situations due to the energy crisis. Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari apologised to Nigerians for the darkness and fuel scarcity they are currently facing, assuring that solutions were under way. Apology accepted. But we hasten to say that assurances do not provide solutions to problems. What does is giving practical expression to the needs of the people. Nigerians cannot continue to live in darkness.
