By Adeola Aderounmu

The national power provider in Nigeria popularly called NEPA is probably the most useless government company or organization in Africa, if not in the world.

Power supply is almost absent despite billions of dollars earmarked for this company annually. The problem with NEPA has been treated in several essays here.

https://aderinola.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/if-nepa-goes-on-strike

https://aderinola.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/everybody-is-on-strike-in-nigeria

Power supply in Nigeria is worse than a nightmare.

Every Nigerian family/household now has a generator. The size, numbers and quality of your generation is even a revelation of your economic strength. Therefore generators have names and one popular one is “I pass my neighbor”. I pass my neighbor is one the smallest generators you can buy and if your neighbor doesn’t have any, definitely you are richer than him/her.

What is even worse is that you will pay monthly for electricity bills whether you have used it or not. NEPA is a government agency in Nigeria that is duping the people of billions of naira across the country everyday.

 

Sometimes you can have electricity for 2 or 3 days only in a month, yet your bill will be on the rise. NEPA forces you to pay anyway. The option is that NEPA can “cut” your light so that you are deprived of resting your generator for those (2 or 3 days) of interrupted power supply.

NEPA is one of the biggest woes in Nigeria. Among other national calamities in Nigeria NEPA is a clear revelation of the total absence of intelligence among the evil ruling class.

Some countries in the world have had uninterrupted power supplies for hundreds of years and Nigeria cannot boast of 24 hours of uninterrupted power. Nigerian rulers are fools to the core.

What would have been more rewarding than to set a one-agenda program of ensuring that power is steady in Nigeria? Since 1999 rogues, thieves and looters have paraded the landscape of Nigeria.
They are all thieves.

Before 1999 it was the same story but things got worse under civilian looters. There is no sense in Nigerian politics and policy.
On what will the economy rest? What is the backbone of technology, science, innovations, growth and development if not constant power supply?

Several companies both big and small run on own power generations.
Those who cannot do have left Nigeria and others have packed up totally. Nigeria has about 5 to 6 generations of unemployed graduates and unemployment generally will be on the rise in the absence of power.

There are no genuine commitments from any Nigerian government to make power constant. A serious / an embarrassed government will almost invariably shed other agenda or program to ensure that power supply is constant at all cost, at any cost. Not Nigeria where fools are in power all the time. It’s a shame, a disgrace beyond human comprehension.

The kind of power supply in Nigeria does not correlate with the fact that people pay bills for electricity. By now the government of Jonathan should be so ashamed to even ask people to continue to pay NEPA bills.

The way things are in Nigeria, people should not be paying for electricity until it is constant and assuring. That much the government owed the people.

I cannot believe that NEPA and the government of Nigeria especially is still asking people to pay for what is rarely available. It is robbery and very characteristic of the Nigerian government populated by thugs and thieves from the presidency to the last man in the local council area.

In my opinion this is a great scandal and it qualifies NEPA to be the worst government agency in the world today.