Remove me from the national grid

I have listened to the lamentations of Super Minister, Babatunde Fashola, on the poor power situation in the country and I want to genuinely help him come around his problem. I agree that it is not his making that some band of avengers has vowed not to allow gas flow out of the Niger Delta region to fire thermal stations across the country to provide electricity to citizens.

It is also not my fault or any Nigerian for that matter, that the avengers are headed in that direction. As an individual, I can only offer the help that is within my ability to give. It is a kind of personal sacrifice I must say. I can only sacrifice myself, not others in the first place. Somehow, I have come to discover that I can do without public electricity after all, and I want to ask Fashola not to worry about me anymore. He should remove me from the list of persons and households that require public electricity in Nigeria. That should make the burden on him lighter by some measure, no matter how little.

Sometimes really, we erroneously think that certain things are not possible. Nothing, including life without electricity is impossible. After all, before the advent of that English man called Michael Faraday, who invented the electric dynamo (a kind of power generator) in 1831, which somehow marked the beginning of the deployment of electricity in almost everything on earth, man (and woman too) had lived and very well too.
And so, what is the big deal if electricity fails to flow in Nigeria. At almost N200 per litre, buying diesel to run a 20-KVA gen set every night when it is not meant to pump water into the overhead tank but to watch television and move about in bright light is not a very viable option. In fact, to effectively live through Nigeria’s dark age, I have become a valuable collector of sundry items.

The last time I did the count, I had three pieces of rechargeable fans, something called kerosene iron, close to half a dozen rechargeable lamps and a couple of telephone power banks to keep the handsets alive. One concerned citizen has advised me to add two or so inverters to raise the bar. I will do so when the naira, which has started appreciating following some monetary stunt by the CBN last week, gets to one to the dollar as promised by President Buhari and the APC.

None of these items is made in Nigeria; they are all imported from China, which we must thank endlessly for helping us out of the electricity quagmire. Imagine what would happen if China were to get angry with us and stop the exportation of rechargeable lamps, fans, flash torches, generators, etc. to Nigeria. This is why Nigeria must not annoy China the way the US does all the time. Let us continue to thank the Chinese for their kindness. It is not easy for another economy that is many time zones away to work assiduously for the well being of your own economy.

I have also got my organization, which runs permanently on IPP (Independent Power Plant) to thank for the successes I have recorded in this great effort to live without electricity. And this is how my office has assisted. I have two sets of lamps that I recharge in the office interchangeably for basic illumination at home in the night. When one set of lamps is at home discharging, the other is in the office recharging. The weather has been very helpful too. One can at least sleep without sweat if the rechargeable fans become completely drained and unable to produce air.

In all, I am just being wise at a time Fashola has officially surrendered all power in Nigeria to God. I feel really bad that we are dragging in God into a matter that is within us to handle. Fashola is making it seem as if government needs more than itself, a kind of higher authority from Above, to do the things of government.

I don’t understand! If the avengers will not let gas flow and government, especially in Nigeria with its near infinite capacity to meet its purpose in all matters cannot avenge the avengers and cause them to release gas, is it me who do not even own a cutlass sharp enough to behead a chicken that will vanquish the avengers?

In the history of mankind, it was only once in the Book of Genesis that God came down in the cool of the evening to look for Adam in the Garden of Eden. God does not come down in that sense again in the cool of the evening or in the heat of the afternoon or any other time of the day to handle matters for men. And so, that vaulting anthropomorphic desire to have God come down to fix the avengers to free public electricity is misplaced. It is not going to work. It is something else that will work. At the risk of sounding repetitive, let me note that if we continue to bother God about things He has given us dominion to handle, we shall provoke Him to anger and that is a worst-case scenario.

Besides, Jehovah is God of justice. This primarily means two things. One, in his vineyard, workers reap by the same measure they sow; and two, He will not be used to deliver injustice even when it seems the devil is having upper hand and the intervention of the Lord to create peace has become imperative. The universe is always on the side of justice and the enduring peace of God will only come when justice flows in abundance like the waters of River Niger.

This is the point the Nigerian State of which Fashola has become a part, has failed to understand. Nigeria is always seeking peace outside justice and what it gets all the time is graveyard peace, which does not endure. I am saying to desire lasting peace outside justice is fraudulent. No jurisprudence encourages that. Unfortunately, Fashola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and product of the Great University of Benin situated in the Niger Delta, who should know all of this, is behaving as if he also is without thorough understanding.

Yet getting out of this seeming viciousness does not require more than the clear thinking of a handful good men and women. Even so, it has to be accepted that the total loss of public electricity in Nigeria is primarily the funeral of Fashola who is the power minister, in addition to other things. He should be the one to organise the rest mourners as Chief Mourner. Let me make a suggestion right away. For a start, there should be an EXTRAORDINARY (emphasis is mine and deliberate) meeting of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to ventilate the issue. The extraordinariness of the FEC meeting shall be in its composition (not timing), which should exclude President Muhammadu Buhari and Rotimi Amaechi.

Both are great guys, no doubt but they do not have too much to contribute because the meeting will be discussing peace not war in the Niger Delta. If the absence of the President at such a crucial meeting is going to look one kind, a trip to Australia or some location in the deep Pacific to woo direct foreign investors to Nigeria could be organised for him. And Amaechi, all the Service Chiefs, Director General of DSS and the Minister of Defence must be on that trip. Their specific mission is to scout for investors in alternative sources of power such as wind, solar, hydro and even nuclear, outside thermal, to call the bluff of the Niger Delta Avengers.

I guess the Australia mission can pass for a Plan B in case the FEC extraordinary meeting fails to achieve the objective of peace in the Niger Delta and the Avengers have to continue holding back gas from flowing into thermal stations to create electricity!