Read the vice-president’s lips
Electricity is one area the Vice President knew could get the attention of Nigerians. I was not at the launching of the Peugeot 307, but I guess there was too much nonchalance at the event that Mr. Jonathan had to say something to capture the attention of his audience. As a lecturer on sabbatical, he […]
Electricity is one area the Vice President knew could get the attention of Nigerians. I was not at the launching of the Peugeot 307, but I guess there was too much nonchalance at the event that Mr. Jonathan had to say something to capture the attention of his audience. As a lecturer on sabbatical, he was only using an old teacher’s trick. Its soporific effect wore off barely 24 hours after he said it. While he was playing to the gallery in Kaduna, the budget which he and his big boss prepared had gargantuan provisions for the purchase of generating sets. It is not impossible that government is tinkering with a ban on the use of generating sets anywhere else except at the Presidential Villa, the Three Arms Zone and of course government offices come 2010.
Read Mr. Vice-President’s lips! Last year, a newspaper reported a somersault in provisions for the Aso Rock Clinic and made a comparison of budgeted expenditure for that single clinic in comparison to all the others which caters for the entire residents of the FCT. Several months after those purchases Mr. President still makes medical pilgrimages to Mecca and Germany.
Let’s give it to PHCN, there’s been a marked improvement in the past month but it is far from turning generating sets into items for the museum of antiquity. Most of us still have to crank ours at least once every two days. At a time when Babalola was telling Nigerians to support his extra-budgetary demand for more funding for PHCN and touting 4000 megawatt of electricity, the agency responsible announced with candour that it had no idea how much electricity it is even generating. The much touted 6000 watt is nothing but a mirage; as real as the state of emergency promised in that sector but never applied.
Mr. Vice President was only asking Nigerians to imagine the possibilities of a darkness-free country? Its effects would have been felt in the rodent infested factory floors of Kaduna, Bompai in Kano, Apapa in Lagos. It would have brightened the hopes of thousands of its former workers and by extension millions of dependants. But Mr. Vice President must know, dreams die and nothing kills lofty dreams faster than the perpetuity of darkness unleashed on us by successive PDP mismanagement of Nigeria’s resources.
While Mr. Jonathan was making fun of Nigerians, he and his boss had planned to spend N524.4 million buying, installing and fuelling generating sets in the Villa. They planned to spend N82million providing generated electricity for the presidential abode and an extra N100million buying UPS to ensure that they and their children can watch television and play computer games 24-hours while the rest of us grope on in darkness. That the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation would spend N310million on the same luxury, somebody tell me how much the lame-duck National Assembly would spend on this essential commodity?
For, if we had a people’s assembly, we would have called on our representatives not to appropriate one kobo for this purpose. It is my personal believe that electricity will start working the day the Presidential Villa and the Three Arms Zone are subjected to the same treatment that PHCN subjects the citizenry. Fuel queues would not last one day, if everyone; including ministers are made to stay on the queue like everyone else instead of tanking up at fuel dumps. ASUU would never go on another hour of strike the day all the children of ministers and top government functionaries are forced to return to public schools. Roads would be rid of potholes and traffic jams when more ministers get marooned in nutty sections in the middle of nowhere in spite of their sirens and kitted security. We would have uninterrupted water supply if the villa is only connected to the same water supply as the rest of the town. Nigeria will be a better place when government officials are stripped of the unfair privileges that they currently enjoy. And certainly, they will not think of insulting us, the way Mr. Jonathan just did in Kaduna.