Electricity worldwide holds the forte in all social and development parameters. This is the more reason availability of electricity is not an option but unrivalled imperative in nation building.
For a very long time, supply of this very important facility has been lacking, and where available, quite epileptic.
It is however curious to wonder at the fact that what is holding electricity back in Nigeria is not in any way holding back estimated billings. This is an uncomfortable reversal, and a painful irony.
It is patently as bad having the situation as an entrenched practice, happening in a country where huge electricity bills are usually made for periods of darkness in most cases, and rammed down the throats of hapless users as if they do not any more have their rights as consumers.
It is lamentable and quite unconscionable billing the unmetered consumers outrageously for unrendered and shoddy electricity supply services. This is unacceptable.
Electricity consumers must not be preyed upon. They must be metered. This is an irreducible minimum service condition.
In the light of the above, one may be moved to wonder in whose interest this long abhorrent practice is serving, or is it a kind of character in us, and an extension of our long plaguing malaise as a nation?
Frankly speaking, all indices of our underdevelopment, and the associated crimes and criminalities in our society, are inextricably rooted in our perennial poor electricity power experience.
No thanks too to the issue of abysmal petroleum products supplies nationwide. This has made resort to premium motor spirit(pms), an unsavory option to power our respective systems in lieu of electricity, even in spite of their unmitigated soaring prices.
This makes the cost of powering our generating sets and other delicate machines and gadgets herculean, and in some cases prone to damages.
This is apart from the harrowing experiences associated with their procurement at filling stations nationwide, and the cumulative man-hours lost in the process.
Understandably, absence of electricity holds down running of small businesses, and makes setting up of new standard industries unattainable.
The consequences are dire. They include, and not limited to, rising unemployment, dearth of innovativeness, stifled entrepreneurial mind-set of our army of job seekers; and ultimately, general sectoral underdevelopment.
This is quite odd for a country ranked among the world’s largest producers of crude oil!
The despicable habit of exporting crude oil, and the penchant for importing refined petroleum products at exorbitant costs, and lately, the contaminated imported version, is the height of our fuel situation travails.
The afore-mentioned ugly scenario makes the establishment of new refineries, including private sector involvement option, the ultimate panacea to Nigeria’s lingering fuel crises. This is if revamping of our existing moribund refineries remains a drain on our national finances, and a waste of human and other key resources.
Achieving this, in the face of absence of enduring wide-ranging credible power alternatives, example solar, is realisable if we have the desired proactive management of the various resources. Others include, good maintenance culture of the relevant respective producing infrastructure, the needed political will, and the driving patriotic spirit and attitudinal change.
It is only by imbibing these attributes that the situation can be turned around for good.
The respective stakeholders in these crucial twin oil and electricity sectors owe it as a responsibility to redress these sectoral anomalies, to drive the development of the nation.
By Egwu Ben
A Public Affairs Analyst.