Dare To Dream And There Will Be Light

By Belije Madu

I had a dream. In my dream, Nigeria had uninterrupted electricity supply. Yes, Nigerian cities had uninterrupted and improved electricity supply. In my dream, the Nigerian electricity supply industry was fully functional, vibrant and employed thousands of young Nigerians. Electricity industry workers were like oil industry workers: well-paid and proud to be involved in the growth of their industry and country. There was constant electricity supply, during the day and at night. Remotely monitored prepaid meters were installed in almost all houses. Even houses that did not have pre-paid meters had some sort of collective pre-paid metering. There were only minor issues of outstanding or owed payment, as all metres were pre-paid and consumers had many options of buying electricity.

(pix: PR Newswire)

Additionally, different types of electricity packages were available for sale by the Distribution Companies. Depending on the type of electrical appliances one had, different quantities of electricity could be bought for varying periods of time. So, people generally bought and used electricity, based on funds available.

The local Electricity Distribution Company offices had evolved from being dusty and ill-equipped and staffed with ill-tempered persons, to customer care centres, similar to the customer care centres found outside Nigeria. Complaints from electricity consumers were quickly resolved, with respect. Illegal connections and illegal re-connections were things of the past, since the remote electricity monitoring systems, deployed by Distribution Companies detected illegal connections in minutes and since all electricity customers had been geo-spatially mapped by Distribution Companies and their premises could be traced electronically within minutes. Electricity outages were announced days ahead and were limited to a maximum of one hour per outage.

Generators, the previous best friend of every Nigerian home, including the famous I-better-pass-my-neighbour variety, could no longer be found and had become so rare, that school children had to visit facilities, which had emergency power supply, to see what a generator looked like; since, the only premises that bothered to buy generators were premises that could not operate without an emergency electricity supply back-up. Initially, when the price of electricity was increased, everyone complained, but the electricity prices were cheaper than the cost of running generators, so everyone adjusted and moved on. However, with the passage of time, electricity prices started falling. Things were now at a stage, when people went to work, only to come back home to notice that their pre-paid meters had been installed, with information on how to recharge the pre-paid meter from the nearest Distribution Company Customer Care Centre.