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Are they Not Government Properties? By Mutiu Animashawun
One hand builds infra-structures; another hand destroys them. Sometime in the late Seventies, cheap, crudely fabricated aluminum utensils flooded metropolitan Lagos. It turned out that the origin of aluminum was not from smelting or recycled plants-- there was none nearby-- but from the guard rails of the then just-constructed bridges mushrooming in and around Lagos. Gangs of thieves were seen removing rails night after night. It soon became difficult to distinguish construction workers from thieves in the broad daylight.
Criminal enterprises outside the bureaucracy bedevil infra-structures as much as embezzlement of budgetary allocations-- stealing parts or removal of equipments.
Perhaps the same network of gangs removed parts from ECN's transformers nightly. Even during the day, impostors of infamous NEPA did the same. Although its employees did their own fair shares of disrupting power for bribes and stealing parts, but the addition of too many hands worsened the poorly maintained distribution lines in and around most population centers.
With distribution lines degenerating and in complete disarray, generating plants were forced to slowdown. Electricity of the quantity from plants is still practically impossible to store or bottle-up like cooking gas-- the flow must continue down the lines, managing shift from low to high demand. Idle plants led to rolling blackouts until the supply became grossly inadequate to meet the ever increasing demand of commercial users and exodus to population centers.
In part, the problem of distribution lines could be traced to the colonial design of infra-structures in general, which were met solely to serve colonialist's interests. Subsequent regimes practically did nothing to steer away from it. They built haphazardly on the design inherited until it was bursting at seam and became unmanageable.
But the contractual obligations with the neighboring countries surrounding River Niger handicapped Kanji Dam to meet the ever growing demand of our nation, embanking on our own rural electrification. This took a huge chunk out of the supply met for population centers. Our own poor planning furthered shortage of power regardless of efforts to arrest the situation.
The so-called Dutch disease fired the demand as oil brought in money. (The present is not different from the late Seventies and early Eighties.) So a ready-made market for generators unfolded. The first wave of generators was basically Faraday's invention- a simple, oversize dynamo- without electronic chips or fancy microprocessors to boot. They were very noise, belched smoke like locomotives, and had appetite for diesel to qualify for the American slang of gas-gushers. Their sizes required spaces to house them.
Subsequent ones are petrol-fired with diminishing bad traits of their older siblings as microprocessors replaced moving parts.
Generator-importers and service-providers reeking money in by the loads as the national electricity grid continues free-falling up to now-- birth of a food chain. The reverse of the food chain is a steady supply of electricity, meeting the needs of population centers and rural areas. The battle line is drawn. Who needs restructured NEPA called P...? Whatever. Proposed or implemented solutions to improve the supply were several steps behind the realities. And, increasingly, better generators continue to find their ways into the Nigerian markets.
Distribution lines and equipments continue to disappear or vandalize. Behind the snippets of news of attack on utility workers repairing or installing lines or equipments, the dots connect to criminal enterprises. Of course, thievery takes its toll to feed the local used parts market. But when it is organized on a large scale, it is a different case entirely and should be labeled: sabotage.
"No bi government properties?" The story of how we gotten where we are as a nation of nothing works. Are we a nation of saboteurs?
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