Advocates for Reliable and Sustainable Electricity in Nigeria

 By Michael Adebayo Omidiora

About Electricity : Are We hiring a Duck to do the work of an Eagle ?

If you viewed our infrastructure as a pyramid, electricity would be the base, the bedrock, the foundation upon which everything else depends. To understand the predicament we find ourselves in Nigeria without electricity, imagine inverting that pyramid to where everything from the base down is dependent on the unstable apex. "Na so e be for Naija"
No one needs to tell us that our leaders benefit enormously from the failing Electricity. In many occasions, I have consistently termed our PHCN as 'quasi-monopolistic quagmire' for the ceaseless harm it does to our economy and infrastructural developments. Where is this self-appointed giant of Africa, with no electricity to power its rapidly growing mobile industry and to light up its environment? Aside from their moments of junketing around Europe and America, no lesson learned by our venal politicians from their yearly extravagant trips to Hajj and Jerusalem, the Holy lands that speak for themselves in all ramification. Our crooked leaders are just too wicked to lead our society. Therefore, let's agitate for the privatization of PHCN in order to have a reliable and sustainable Electricity in Nigeria. One clever thing we should understand about privatization is that, if you don't supply me Electricity, you can't send me a bill and you can't take my money. After all, our politicians have some stake in our privatized communication sector and it is moving rapidly - One Nigerian owns two mobile phones. Another beauty of a privatized power is that, while you live in the South, you can purchase some Units of Electricity from any of the distribution companies in the North of Nigeria, without changing your electricity cables.

It would be hard to teach someone to smile, whoever attempts to teach someone to want to serve will blame himself, you can't teach personality. What we can do, however, is elect people with those qualities and they will lead us to a promised land.


Michael Adebayo Omidiora is a technology practitioner and a vast international speaker on the subject and presently a technology Grad Student at Helsinki University .