Last week, a former Governor of Edo State, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, raised the alarm about the suffocating exploitation of Nigerians by electricity distribution companies. Oshiomhole, leaned on his background as a former President of the Nigeria Labour Congress to interrogate an issue that is perhaps one of the most discussed on WhatsApp platforms in communities and households facing gripping electricity frustrations.
While Oshiomhole brought some new perspectives to the putrid abnormality of the electricity privatization and the daylight robbery endorsed against Nigerians by the electricity firms, what he did is not particularly different from a chief who calls attention to the stench oozing from the King’s dead cow at the village square.
In Abuja, the AEDC wields the powers of a raging man menacingly holding a cutlass over the necks of helpless men whose hands are tied behind them in besieged communities. The AEDC holds all the aces in the electricity issue and could deploy them in most tormenting manner that shares a boundary with the unimaginable.
Unknown to him, Adams Oshiomhole did not speak for himself or the people of Edo North that he represents as Senator. The labour leader in him only released his prominent voice on loan to millions of angry frustrated Nigerians who do not have the platform at his disposal – the Senate Chambers.
The community I share with angry, bitter electricity users with no protective line and succour whatsoever is a classic example.
In 2011, we started the process of converting a bush into a livable estate of 650 houses in Karsana area of Abuja. Each household was made to cough out the sum of N2 million for infrastructure development because the developers and aspiring homeowners knew that Karsana was lost and not traceable on the government’s map of priority. The determined inhabitants pulled the resources together in batches and bought all the transformers, procured all the cables, all the electricity poles. Of course, it is given that each household in Nigeria must pay for a meter.
I can say with a certainty above the realm of contestation that all households paid for their meters in spite of the national deceit that customers are not supposed to pay for meters. Those behind the enforcement of this clause in the nation’s electricity house of horrors have turned a blind eye on its enforcement because they are either powerless or in cahoots with this regime of terror and horror against the Nigerian user of electricity.
In addition, when the transformers go bad, we replace them. We bear the cost of installation and pay for minor repair work. Our transformers, bought with our sweat, maintained with our hard-earned resources, become property of a private company courtesy of a law scripted against the citizens of Nigeria, with no benefits!
Like vultures waiting in the ‘shadows of their talons’ to reap where did they not sow, the AEDC dangles its conditions for putting extorted transformers to work. To install them, the community would be required to write the firm to donate the transformer as a precondition to install and energize it.
My community in Abuja is a metaphor for electricity misery and agony. The inhabitants adopt a resilience that borders on a stoic resignation to electricity deprivation occasioned by ruthlessly harrowing exploitation by the AEDC for years.
For years, we remained a community in the custody of darkness foisted on us by the AEDC. One thing about darkness is that the absence of electricity bites harder with the reality of other estates within the same city having regular power supply. We became beggars of electricity to the AEDC with strings of promises not meant for fulfillment.
Then this year, our story witnessed a slight change. After completing a major electricity infrastructure, the AEDC started giving us power supply from its 33 KVA line. This, we thought was a reassuring experience until the operators of the nation’s electricity empire unleashed their joker of power supply based on the heinous electricity tariff segregated into band A and others.
The cruel scam threw the community into turmoil. Many cried out as they simply could not afford the tariff which they described as ‘yahoo yahoo’ that was sanctioned by law in Nigeria! The electricity tariff band A or B is a scam scripted against Nigerians by a clan of untouchable private investors whose equipment is provided by a virulently exploited public.
The community members besieged the WhatsApp platform in search of an elusive solution. Pushed to the wall by despair, the residents cried out to their executive committee to plead with the management to return the community to the affordable Band B. Two hundred homeowners led by a serving general and a deputy director opted to be remigrated to Band B.
They embraced the capitalist contention that existence precedes essence. Band A was a threat to their existence as the tariff was clearly spiking blood pressure and contributing to many deaths at the twilight of the receding year. But another group of homeowners reminded them of the lethal regime of darkness and its consequences foisted on the estate by the same AEDC. This group believes that applying to be moved to band B would mean an invitation to the ire of the almighty AEDC which might wield the sledgehammer of darkness against them. They reasoned that the estate should wait till the peak of the dry season when power supply drops to take an informed decision. This estate is the metaphor for all the estates cringing before the electricity regime of impunity by the DISCO.
Without contestation, Senator Adams Oshiomhole is a mighty man. He represents the exclusive class of the wealthy and powerful in our society. He called attention to the huge investment of the Federal Government in the electricity sector with no governing board to moderate their activities. This brand of privatization is a curious mix of the absurd with the ludicrous unknown to normal business principle anywhere outside Nigeria.
Oshiomhole’s cry or clarion call on the hallowed chamber of the Senate shows that the rich had started crying also. Truly, the tears are also at the doorsteps of the rich. While it is normal for the poor to lament and cry, the tears of the wealthy is a taboo which the king and the palace cannot ignore for too long.
A privatization process that empowers a business venture to swindle communities of transformers, cables, poles, cost of installation casts a slur on the nation’s legal system and its preparedness to defend the weak.
Although Oshiomhole left Abuja to dwell on the Benin Disco, the AEDC which provides electricity for his household in Abuja and the National Assembly which serves as his office is a bull that has gone berserk in a market of helpless women. The Senate and indeed the National Assembly should take a look at this policy that has done no good to average households in this country.
A law that resides ownership of electricity equipment bought by individuals on business owners, that protects private companies against helpless Nigerians is an aberration in need of national condemnation. Adams Oshiomhole and all other legislators of good conscience should dwell on this particular issue of concern to Nigerians of all communities.
Fidelis Soriwei, a media consultant, Publishes theNetwork.ng
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