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Abdulkadir Salaudeen
To President Tinubu and his regime, Nigerians seem to be too stubborn. We are too stubborn in enduring hardship. We are too dogged, overly obstinate, and desperately determined to live in the face of the daily revised hardship. Nigerian hardship is being revised daily by its rulers to make sure that it goes round so much so that no one is left with any sense of relief. That many of us still survive Tinubu regime, we deserve being awarded the most resilient people on earth. We deserve award for that. I don’t think this government is comfortable with our resilience.
It is as if this government says to some exogenous de-factor rulers of Nigeria, probably the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that: “All attempts to suffocate Nigerians always hit a brick wall. All efforts to annihilate them completely are met with resilience. We have tried to kill them through oil subsidy removal, they do not die. We floated the naira (is it even floating or immersion?) and made life terribly difficult for them, they still breathe. We tried to stop subsidy on education so that only our children (government children) could go to school, they still manage to pay through their nose.”
Now addressing Nigerians, “since you (Nigerians) have proven to have elephant skin, you have proven to possess that psychological trait of tough-mindedness, we shall throw you into darkness and you shall live in darkness forever. We shall take you back, willy-nilly, to the Dark Age. You do not need (or have) to share modernity with us. This is to teach you lesson that there is limit to resilience. We want you dead; not alive.
If anyone says the above lines is the ongoing discussion within the Nigerian ruling circle, I will not dispute it. One finds it difficult to understand why the government would hike electricity tariff when it is yet to address the hardship that trails its removal of oil subsidy. The hike isn’t by five (5) or ten (10) per cent, but by three hundred and forty (340) per cent. The tariff was increased from N66 to N225 per kilowatt. This is asphyxiating the country’s economic life wire. With this hike, it will be miraculous for many businesses to survive.
The implications of this new electricity tariff on Nigerians, especially the masses, would be probably more than those of removal of oil subsidy. When shall we breathe in Nigeria? The government finds the best time to make the hardship well felt as if infliction of hardship must also be strategic. It settles for the hottest period of the year—when the heat wave is at its peak—to throw the masses into darkness. Nigeria has become a jinxed country where its citizens can only wait for next form (or round) of hardship from those they queued for—under the sun and in the rain—to vote into power.
Three days to former President Buhari’s exit from the seat of power, in an article titled Whether to Daura or to Niger Republic, Just Go!, I wrote: “As if Buhari regime has some think-tanks whose primary assignment is to research and brainstorm on how best to keep Nigerians wailing under the regime’s merciless and heavy jackboot…I have observed and concluded that the regime is very uncomfortable when the masses have a brief sense of relief. To be comfortable, the regime must secrete its venom in form of policy to unleash untold hardship on the masses.”
Replace Buhari with Tinubu in the quote above, the quote would still be perfectly read. This gives credence to the fact that Tinubu’s pledge of continuity from where Buhari stopped is sacred. Tinubu did not only continue from where Buhari stopped, he increases the intensity of hardship and has now added darkness to it. With this new electricity tariff, darkness has finally chased light away in the homes of many Nigerians.
The government is not pretentiously ambiguous about it. To be candid, it bands Nigerians into the haves and the have-nots. It humanizes some Nigerians who should need electricity to survive and dehumanizes others who should survive even without power supply. It regards some citizens (bands them into Band A because they have money to pay) and disregards others. It criminalizes poverty and bands sinners (the poor) into what it designates as Band E vis-a-vis power supply. In case you don’t know, it is now a luxury to make our fans work—at least to mitigate this heat wave—as we struggle to sleep at night.
One might think those banded as Band A consumers are pampered, it isn’t so. Mr Musliu Oseni, the Vice Chairman of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), explained that there are still about 15 to 20 per cent of Band A consumers who are not metered. That is to say, their electricity bills would be estimated discriminately to disadvantage of consumers.
Dear Nigerians, for your information, we are being punished for not turning off our freezers for days especially when going to work. This is a paraphrase of what the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, puts forward as justification for hike in electricity tariff. Going by Adelabu’s explanation, enthusiasts of Nigerian affairs from outside Nigeria will have the impression that Nigerians enjoy stable power supply and every house has freezer.
Let’s assume there is stable power supply in Nigeria, are refrigerators meant to be turned off? Experts advise otherwise and the advice is agreeable to common sense. When asked if one could unplug fridge at night when it is certain that no one will need to open it for eight hours, “the short answer is no,” says LeeAnne Jackson, health science policy advisor at FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Jackson continues, “Refrigerators should be maintained at a constant temperature setting at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below,” She further explains; “Numerous foods in your refrigerator might have bacteria on them, and the cold temperature inhibits the bacteria from multiplying (or at least slows it down). If the food warms up, the bacteria will reach harmful levels faster.”
I don’t blame Adelabu. He is a trained accountant and his career had been in his trained field where he was a first class graduate and ascended to the pinnacle of his career as a deputy governor in the nation’s apex bank (CBN). I blame our system which habitually puts a square peg (which might not be bad in and of itself) in a round hole. Adelabu should be excused as a minister of power if he does not know that refrigerators are not to be regularly turned off. His background isn’t in power sector at all, it is not surprising that we now live in darkness.
Under Adelabu, only this year, Nigeria has experienced national grid collapse twice in three months. As I write, many parts of the country including the ‘Band A’ consumers are in darkness. Power supply is not only epileptic, it is now the epilepsy itself. The well banded Nigerians (Band A) who should supposedly enjoy power supply because they can pay are left to pay for the power they don’t enjoy. This is banding Nigerians by the government in order to officially bandit (rob) them of their comfort just like bandits continue to excel in banditry in the country with outrageous temerity.
In NERC’s banding of Nigerians, those under Band A are customers entitled to a minimum of 20 hours of light per day. Band B, a minimum of 16 hours of light per day. Band C, a minimum of 12 hours per day.Band D, a minimum of 8 hours of electricity per day. Lastly, the Band E customers have access to a minimum of 4 hours per day. Band F and Band F9 should be added to it. Band F are dreaming consumers, like myself, who currently do not have power supply at all but are hopeful to be consumers soon. Band F9 are completely hopeless; they can only get electric light in their homes maybe by Providence.
Dear Nigerian rulers, it is disgustingly undemocratic to think, in principle, that some Nigerians deserve 20 hours of light per day while others should manage just 4 hours. In practice, how many Band A consumers even enjoy 4 hours power supply a day not to talk of 20 hours?
Abdulkadir Salaudeen
salahuddeenabdulkadir@gmail.com
