it would be difficult to support the call that soldiers be removed from manning power stations when we are still having it so good
I don’t know about you but in my city, many people have now been reporting that they have been experiencing some steadiness in electricity supply to their houses for some time now. When I asked what magic could be responsible, I was told that soldiers are now manning the power stations. Hurray, I thought, that makes sense. Soldiers manning power stations, unemployed youths manning traffic posts and civil servants manning the seas. Now, who mans our security posts, fishermen? What a penkelemesi!
I’m just joking. It’s not the best thing to have soldiers doing anything other than soldiering but I am very happy indeed to welcome electricity once in a while now. You just can’t imagine what joy it gives one to return from a hard day’s work, turn into one’s street and be able to complain joyfully that some of one’s neighbours have once again forgotten to turn off their security lights! You see, after being so used to lighting our ways in the house alternately with Aladdin’s lamp, Luggard’s bush lantern or some smoke-belching generator and being afraid of every shadow because no one could see quite clearly, we can now run around corridors with our eyes closed and leave security bulbs on all day. What a warm glow that gives one.
The problem with this country is that the government enjoys watching us all not doing our work with too lazy or sleepy an eye. Perhaps, because it does not do its own work, I don’t know. All along the government knew that the billions and billions of naira it doled out to provide a steady stream of electricity currents to my house (I honestly don’t know about yours) have, somewhere along the line, disappeared. While complaining very loudly about the problem (if only because the suffering populace will not let them sleep), the same said government had known all along where the problem was. Instead, it simply equipped its government houses, including Aso Rock, with the most powerful generator sets in the neighbourhood. Yet, the engineering manpower in PHCN can, if they connect their heads together, conduct enough electricity round Africa and the world if the rest of mankind would not mind. So, where was the problem? I am told that the problem is the Nigerian factor, and I just hate that.
I cannot begin to count here many of the unconscionable things I am told PHCN field staff have done. I, writing this, have been present though when a then-NEPA staff told a woman he had been sent to cut off her electricity supply for not paying a crazy bill but he would hold off if she was ready to bring a certain amount of money. She accused him of being hardhearted; he said she was stingy and should stop wasting his time because he still had many houses to visit that day. So, he just upped on the tree and cut her off, just like that, one snip. Yet another now-PHCN group held off connecting a businessman’s hotel to the grid for the simple reason that he had failed to ‘see them’. I have listened to so many tales about electricity company workers and connections. What I have failed to understand, however, is why I had electricity constantly when a then-NEPA staff member lived in my neighbourhood; and when he moved out of my neighbourhood, the constancy moved with him. I just cannot figure out what changed.
My take on this whole lot is that the government is to blame. It has been too slow on justice, just like our Almighty. Someone once said though if the Almighty were not slow on justice, where would I be? Touché! But just think, the government is not our Almighty; powerful yes, but not Almighty, so it has no right to be so slow. Otherwise, it should have drafted in the soldiers decades ago to man our power stations. Just think what unnecessary headache, heartache and whatever else ache I would have been spared when all along, it had the solution. And what a solution!
So, are the PHCN people really serious about asking the government to withdraw those wonderful soldiers? I mean as in serious, serious? Has it ever occurred to these PHCN people that people do not really like them? The businessman and the woman I talked about do not and I also don’t. I don’t know how many articles I have written on them on this page and elsewhere but they have remained adamant like an adamantine stone. So, that makes three of us that I know, and I’m still counting. Now, how on earth do they think people can support them?
Worse, the NLC now wants to sponsor them in a strike. I sincerely hope that that otherwise serious body will not attempt to test their popularity once again by sticking their necks out too far. They would just find themselves swallowing humiliation down a long throat after the head has been cut off. You know what our problem is? Our problem is that we lack a sense of history. I was going to leave this subject for another day, but we might as well tackle some of it now. The place of history is so clear that, right now, only the blind of this nation are seeing it clearly. The sighted are going around blinking like an owl and asking, where on earth did we leave our personality? You know how I know? Secondary school pupils do not take history any more.
When I asked a recently graduated SS pupil if he did history, he wrinkled his brow and queried, history? It was clear he had forgotten what on earth that was. Another one said he did not take it but he thought one or two people offered it in their school. Then he laughed. It was clear he thought that those two must have been a little wanting in the head.
The beauty of history is that it helps us evaluate our position at all times. By keeping us in constant touch with our ancestry, our hopes, desires and aspirations may remain in sight. What has evolved into this modern Nigeria from the ancient ruins of old Nigeria would be a sore disappointment to our ancestors were they to wake up into our midst right now. The only thing is that we would all run away from them as if they were ghosts (oh yes, they would be ghosts!). We do however still venerate their names. They, on the other hand, would throw stones at some of our names because we have turned their dreams into ashes. It would be a case of the dead casting out the living. Someday, we will still talk about history.
The great members of staff of Nigeria’s power company have had their day. They have failed the history test because rather than move the nation’s generic dreams forward, they have hurled the country down spiral staircases of loss, regret, hopelessness and destruction. Ask people who have lost relatives to generator blow-outs, fumes or in hospitals. Ask people who have been laid off work because companies could no longer afford the overhead. Ask …
Yet now, these same people want the nation to care because they perceive that they are being cheated. How can we when we are still chaffing from their tyranny? Few will support any attempt to deny any group of workers their entitlements, but it would be difficult to support the call that soldiers be removed from manning power stations when we are still having it so good. I’m not sure how long this arrangement will last but as I am writing this, I have electricity for the first time in a long time. That should count for something.
