Electricity Crisis In Nigeria: Can Buhari Break The Jinx?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

If former President Goodluck Jonathan had succeeded in solving the ever-worsening electricity crisis in Nigeria, he would have left office last May as one of Nigeria’s   greatest leaders. And that is, assuming that singular feat would not have been able to reelect him by deflating the strong, vicious and clearly unedifying campaign bolstered by unrealistic promises massively deployed against him by the opposition.

*Jonathan and Buhari

Granted, the Olusegun Obasanjo regime, allegedly, squandered some $16 billion to plunge the country deeper into darkness, but Jonathan is no Obasanjo, and I doubt if his ambition was to come into office to reenact the Obasanjo disaster. Jonathan’s failure, therefore, to realize the strategic role of electricity in the life of modern man and demonstrate that five years was enough for him to write his name in gold by lighting up the country is the key reason, I think, he left office with his head bowed, despite his very noble act of conceding defeat to President Muhammadu Buhari, thus aborting the desperation of those waiting in the wings to exploit the situation to unleash terrible mayhem in the country and waste drums of innocent blood. 

The problem, I think is that, President Jonathan really stretched political naivety far beyond its malleable limit when he failed to realise that the regime of darkness and unspeakable extortion unleashed on Nigerians by the private operators currently generating and distributing electricity in Nigeria was gradually exerting some influence on the way Nigerians perceived his government. Those companies appeared to have conspired to work extremely hard to further compound his already growing image problems and deepen grave disaffection against him among the populace. And no one should have realized it better than the former president that such a situation was too harmful to be allowed to endure, especially, on the eve of a very bitterly contested election. But Jonathan and his party were insufferably complacent and took several things for granted until a devastating defeat was served him like an unexpected, unappetizing breakfast. 

 

It would seem that he realized only too late in the day (assuming he ever did) that he was facing a peculiar kind of opposition: one which, though, pitiably lacking in brighter ideas or better preparation for governance (as Nigerians are already witnessing), appeared more adept in chronicling and magnifying the failings of his government. And so, it was easy for them to promise largely unrealistic alternatives and got sizable number of people to buy into their grand illusion that the only solution to Nigeria’s many problems was just the exit of Jonathan.