The commendation, ostensibly borne out of pleasant surprise, which some Small and Medium Scale Enterprises’ (SMSEs) operators extended to the Federal Government recently over the noticeable, yet little improvement in power supply, suggests an extensive story line on the magic inherent in President Muhammadu Buhari’s body language, character and commitment to exemplary leadership. Reports said some artisans like beauty salon operators, fashion designers, restaurant owners and vulcanizers, acclaimed that near steady electricity supply had impacted positively on their businesses. This will assist tremendously in vividly illustrating the agonies the lingering national tragedy that epileptic power supply constitutes to Nigerian citizens and the country’s real sector, in a world so much in a hurry to explore and expand hitherto unfathomable horizons of science and technology. The appreciation shown by the SMEs’ operators attests to the fact that Nigeria’s power sector, which has been serving as a back-up power supply facility, the role stand-by generators ought to play, should sit up and get serious if it wants to enjoy the patronage of any business enterprise or private consumer worth the name in the country today.
Small-scale businesses like barbers’ and hair dressers’ salons, music shops, cold drinks stores, domestic iced block making, welding/ metal fabrication, tailoring, photocopying and desktop publishing, electrical/electronic repairs, et cetera, would have for long gone extinct without the grace of private generators. But with the ever increasing high cost of purchase and running of the generators, hundreds of thousands of such small business concerns were forced to close shops, thus exacerbating the problem of unemployment, poverty and destitution. One major side effect of electricity supply sector’s deplorable performance over the years is the prominence given the rather degrading job of riding ‘okada’ or tricycles, which many artisans, including some jobless graduates took up to put food on the table and help bottle-up their economic frustration.
At the individual family level, just a privileged few or the overly rich are able to square up to the ordeal of embarrassing electricity supply. They power their refrigerators and freezers, irons, radio and television sets, water pump and other household electrically-controlled appliances with private generators. For the down-trodden others who rely on state supply of electricity, however, their toilets and kitchens sink, overflow with unwashed dishes because of water scarcity. They put up with all manner of skin diseases; while insomnia takes toll on both children and adults because of unbearable heat at night. To rub salt on the injury, the Nigerian state and its pathologically corrupt and inept electricity agency gloat with the impression that Nigerians have no choice but to put up with the aberration, thus compounding the basic problem of gross incompetence with official complacency, arrogance and insensitivity.
The pathetic situation persisted and even became worse several months after the former President Goodluck Jonathan government unbundled the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and ceded its functions to private sector investors/ operators. It was, however, a deal that placed the cart before the horse, as the government solicited for public patience, while power generation companies (GENCOs) and distribution companies (DISCOs) grappled with their operational problems. Simply put, they were not ready for their new tasks. But the DISCOs were hell bent on exploiting power consumers through arbitrary coded and ‘crazy’ electricity bills which they intimidated consumers to pay mostly for electricity neither supplied to nor consumed. This was officially supported by Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) dubious Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO), which supports reckless annual increases of power tariff, with scant emphasis on the supply corridor and consumer satisfaction.
Worse still, majority of power consumers were denied pre-paid meters, which would have compelled electricity providers to earn income based strictly on the quantum of power they supplied. The electricity regulatory agency also approved a monthly fixed charge of N750 and another N500 for meter maintenance, which consumers with or without prepaid meters are forced to cough up, purportedly for the purpose of assisting DISCOs recoup their investments, while electricity consumers are left to stew in virtually zero electricity supply. The massive protests now dogging the arbitrary tariffs; leading in a lot of cases to the recalcitrance of consumers to pay up, is an indication that Nigerians cannot permit the daylight robbery for long.
The DISCOs have enjoyed their undeserved loot enough and must now realise that they must work for their pay. This they can only achieve, not through state repression, but by supplying electricity regularly and providing prepaid meters to assure customers that they are paying for services truly rendered; otherwise there may be no end to power consumers’ protestations against DISCOs’ exploitation.
