PHCN is Killing Us!

By

Mallam Gandu

mallamgandu@yahoo.com

The general assessment of PHCN among Nigerians is that it is a key infrastructure in the country whose failure over the years have largely contributed to the failure of the economy via its negative impact on business and commercial activities and via making the Nigerian environment unattractive to investors.

There is however one aspect of the failure of PHCN which most Nigerians underestimate its impact on the their lives. It is the area of its service delivery. The emphasis here is not on the fact that the power being generated is inadequate but more on the fact that the little that is being generated is not being supplied to Nigerians the way it should be. Nigerians expect a certain level of service delivery from PHCN for two main reasons; first because it is (at least for now) largely government owned and secondly because every relationship between a service provider and a service consumer presupposes the existence of a service level agreement (SLA). A key component of this SLA must state that if for any reason the service is to be unavailable, the consumer has the right to be given a prior notice. The prevailing practice shows that either the SLA does not exist or that Nigerians as the consumers of the service do not have any rights in the agreement.

The title of this piece might appear to the reader to sound too hard on PHCN, but after going through the details, he may find himself compelled to believe that it is about the mildest title that could be given to the piece.

The piece is all about some short narratives on happenings that I have either witnessed, was told by a witness or was told by someone who heard from a witness, which, in the end creates a picture that gives one an idea of the kind of torture Nigerians are going through in the hands of PHCN.

First let me start on a humorous note, probably this might help to create the impression in the mind of the reader that I did not intend any attack in putting the piece together.

A colleague of mine in the office told me a story about how he was enjoying a delicious plate of pounded yam and egusi soup one evening after a hard day’s job. According to him, it was one of his most favorite settings; poundo plus egusi to quench the hunger and tiredness of the day. It was like being rewarded for hard work. He was just reaching the climax of this eating session, he had just scooped a portion of the poundo, molded it into shape and was taking it to the waiting egusi soup plate when PHCN ceased electricity and there was total darkness. He was thrown off balance, shocked and almost lost his appetite immediately. Determined not to drift into an anti-climax of his eating session, he decided to wait with his hand mid-air, beckoned on one of the grown-up boys in the house, and ordered him to put on the stand-by generator. He had to wait in this position for light to be restored via the generator, a process which took about three minutes, after which he continued his meal. I imagined him in the waiting position like a still photograph for three minutes, it was just as funny as it was pathetic.

Another colleague narrated to me a very similar story except that the ending of he’s was slightly different. In his own case, he decided that the darkness would not cut short his enjoyment, so went ahead to conclude the process he started only end up putting the scooped pouded yam piece in his hand on the dining table surface instead of the egusi soup plate.

Another funny one was the story somebody told me of an event that took place one evening in a hall where he (my narrator) was in attendance. According to him, the event had just come to an end and most attendees had just stood up from their seats and started making their way out. It was in the midst of this that a brief chat ensued between two of the male attendees whom were at a distance of about three meters from each other and there was a need for one of them to stretch his hand to collect something from the second one. It was exactly at this point that a lady was to make her way pass the two gentlemen and somehow she had to pass between them and just then PHCN struck putting out the lights. Obviously she happens to be one those ladies who believe (from her dressing) that the more skin you expose, the more fashionable you are. The man stretching his hand was actually doing it without paying much attention and with the sudden darkness that was added to this scenario, your guess is as good as mine. The gentleman’s hand landed on the lady’s partly exposed breasts and unfortunately the lady interpreted his action as intentional. The scene that followed was better imagined and the story certainly has no place in this piece.

There was this other story I heard from not less than two narrators concerning someone in a local barbing saloon whose head had been barbed halfway when PHCN took the light. Unfortunately the standby generator chose that specific time to disappoint the barber and he had no other fallback arrangement to mitigate against such a scenario. The customer ended up with a half-barbed head at least for several hours before a stop-gap solution was provided.

Stories like this may sound funny but it is an undisputable fact that none of them is a laughing matter especially if you imagine that the victim in any of the stories could be you. To drive home this point, it would be important to shift to a psychological gear in the next two narratives.

My general experience is that anytime PHCN “do their worst” by ceasing the light unannounced my mood changes immediately. I have also noticed this trend in members of my family and virtually everybody I spoke to, both young and old.

On several occasions, when the agents of darkness aka PHCN strike, it takes me quite a lot of effort to control the sudden wave of psychological stress that overwhelms me. If it happens while I am at home with my family, after soothing my own stress, I find myself carrying the burden of having to calm down one or more of my family members who is over-reacting to the momentary torture we were being subjected to. Reactions from my family members often range from mild one such as a long hiss to more serious ones like a cry of horror and helplessness often from the younger ones. Sometimes the reaction from children could even be fatal as they attempt to run in the enveloping darkness exposing themselves to dangers of potentially unimaginable consequences.

One of the biggest psychological torments I have received as a result of PHCN’s blackout is when my brain is forced to shut down ungracefully while it is creating a mental picture during a very useful conversation, while making sense of an important news item I am watching, while watching a favorite documentary or while relishing a very happy moment.  Sometimes you comically wonder if they operate with witchcraft by the way they chose the right time to strike. How else can you describe a situation where a very important breaking news is being relayed on CNN, Aljazeera or Channels TV, just when the news anchor has finished giving out the introductory lines and says: “our correspondent has the details”, the light goes out.

I certainly do not need to be a professor of human psychology or a qualified MBBS to know that the daily torture our spirit is being exposed to by PHCN is killing us in installments. Apart from the  issue of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent over several years only to produce a record-breaking lowest ever megawatts of electric power, my major worry is the way power supply as a service is being provided to the consuming public who pay for it. When it is given and when it is taken away is under the whims of PHCN in blatant disregard for the fundamental rights of the consumer.

In addition to the daily doses of social or psychological punishments being administered on the Nigerian public by PHCN, sometimes their actions or inactions becomes outright fatalities.

A colleague of mine and his wife nearly lost their lives in 2009 in a fire incidence that saw them sustaining multiple first degree burns and made them to undergo treatment for almost one year. The fire incidence was a direct consequence of the PHCN’s inactions. There are times when the frequency of power outage in some areas become so much that generating sets in the area become the primary power sources while PHCN sources become the standby. At such times, it is not unusual to find petrol being stored in jerry cans in a many households. Despite the attendant risk associated with this practice, you cannot really blame those who engage in it as it would not make any sense for one to have to visit the filling stations everyday to buy petrol for one’s generating set. Another characteristics of periods of power outages  is the use of kerosene stoves as a second option in the absence of electric cookers. It is in one of such circumstances that this colleague of mine found himself and on the fateful evening he had cause to move a jerry can of petrol from one spot to another within the vicinity of the naked flames of the wife’s kerosene stove. Along the line there was leakage from the can which he didn’t notice. The situation created a the perfect scene for fire to ignite and within a split moment it had inflicted severe burns on him and the wife who had rushed to him to assist.

Accidents caused by poor quality of PHCN service come in different forms. Sometimes it is the frequent unannounced power outages that result in domestic accidents. A household in my neighborhood nearly lost their entire belongings to a fire disaster but for some kind of divine intervention. It was one of those times when PHCN decided to flip-flop electricity supply in my area such that we had power one moment and the next moment we hadn’t and the situation persisted for days. Usually when retiring to bed for the day during a blackout, family members need to ensure that all electrical appliances that are not supposed to run overnight are switched off.  The blackout situation normally increases the chance of inadvertently leaving one or more of such appliances on overnight. This is exactly what happened to these very neighbors of mine and before you know their whole apartment was to up in flames but for the timely intervention of neighbors.

Sometimes it is the timing of the blackout that constitutes the problem. When power outage occur at odd times it becomes an issue. I was told the story of a family who went to bed during the hot season and believing they could rely on PHCN service, they didn’t make arrangement for ventilation other than the one supplied by fans and air conditioners in the house. Unfortunately for them PHCN struck at the dead of the night. They were woken-up later by painful cries of their kids. At first they thought they were just reacting to the heat that suddenly engulfed the house only to discover later that they were hit by meningitis. None of the kids died after all but a middle-aged man I was told of in another story was not that lucky. In his case, a surgical operation was being carried out on him in a government hospital when the lights went out. The standby generator also failed to start leaving the surgeons with no choice than to complete the operation using torch lights and lamps. The man eventually died from complications arising from the poorly executed surgical operation

Sudden power outages can be a recipe for accidents even on highways. I witnessed a scene where a very ghastly accident was to happen at a traffic light junction but for God’s divine intervention. A driver plying the north-to-south axis of the crossroad was speeding to beat the impending red light of the traffic light, unknown to him, within the spilt moment there was a power outage and another driver plying the east-to-west axis was approaching speedily. Unfortunately the second driver, from his distance, didn’t even know that just a split moment earlier the traffic light was working and it had stopped him. They both escaped the accident narrowly but the screeching of tires, the left-to-right swerving by both of them and the thinking that one of them could have ran into any of us that were close by really left us all horrified.  

Security is one thing that suffers most during extended blackouts. It is a well established fact that blackouts increase the rate of theft and pilfering in the neighborhoods. The combination of darkness in most of the surrounding and the grinding noise of generating sets around provide the perfect scenario for tip toeing thieves to operate.

There are stories of people suffocating in lifts because of sudden power outage. There are stories of people who went to enjoy the convenience of cash withdrawals using an ATM machine only to end up spending days visiting their bank to retrieve their ATM card because it got stuck in the machine due to sudden power outage. There are countless other such stories.

I wish we had statistics of people who had high blood pressure and other heart related diseases or had theirs aggravated by sudden power outages. I wish we had statistics of people who died due to the same or related reason.

Unfortunately there over half dozen number of agencies that are either directly or indirectly charged with the responsibility of checking the excesses of PHCN but they are not doing so. The Consumer protection council, the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, SERVICOM, Standards Organization of Nigeria, EFCC, Code of Conduct Bureau.

The past successive government should have their heads buried in shame for bring electricity supply to the state where it is today but instead what we have today is that it has become the avenue to roll out monies from the government coffers to sponsor political campaign rallies. So much that when the government of the day starts announcing that they will miraculously raise power generation from 500% of the current output in the next six months (which they couldn’t do in decades), what Nigerians should expect is that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon be leaving the coffers only to end up in PDP campaign rallies or election rigging projects across the country.