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.