"Day after day, I awkwardly navigate between my sources of light, the big generator for family gatherings, the inverter for cooler nights, the small generator for daytime work.
Like other privileged Nigerians who can afford to, I have become a reluctant libertarian, providing my own electricity, participating in a precarious frontier spirit. But millions of Nigerians do not have this choice. They depend on the malnourished supply from their electricity companies.
In 2005, a law was passed to begin privatizing the generation and distribution of electricity, and ostensibly to revamp the old system rooted in bureaucratic rot. Ten years on, little has changed. Most of the companies that produce electricity from gas and hydro sources, and all of the distribution companies that serve customers, are now privately owned. But the link between them — the transmission company — is still owned by the federal government.
I cannot help but wonder how many medical catastrophes have occurred in public hospitals because of "no light," how much agricultural produce has gone to waste, how many students forced to study in stuffy, hot air have failed exams, how many small businesses have foundered. What greatness have we lost, what brilliance stillborn? I wonder, too, how differently our national character might have been shaped, had we been a nation with children who took light for granted, instead of a nation whose toddlers learn to squeal with pleasure at the infrequent lighting of a bulb."
-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Does Adichie ever write for Nigerians, say in the local Guardian, or newspapers? Nigeria could use her voice and be comforted by her insights. Like most African writers of stature, Adichie is always writing for the West and many times her stories about Nigeria are put-downs. Not that Nigeria makes it easy to respect her. She is of course fast becoming a rogue state with the active connivance of the writers and thinkers that write silly little things about her in the NYT, etc. So much for the single story, what are we doing about these issues other than living a symbiotic existence with Nigeria's parasites, or feigning indifference/neutrality? Adichie takes full advantage of Nigeria's lack of self-respect and goes full throttle, dissing her, put-down by put-down. Nigerians deserve this.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/opinion/sunday/lights-out-in-nigeria.html?referrer=
- Ikhide
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