ENERGY-NIGERIA: Electricity Returns to Villages after 20 Years of Darkness

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

EPEDO, Edo State, Nigeria, Mar 3 2003 (IPS) - This small community of about 5,000 inhabitants was among the first villages to benefit from Nigeria’s first rural electrification programme in 1970, but darkness returned to the village just two years after the inauguration of the project as thieves carted away the electrical equipment.

Now, 20 years later, electricity has been restored to this farming community, thanks to the new rural electrification programme being driven by Nigeria’s new administration. The villagers, including those in neighbouring Bekuma and Makeke, can now smile as their days of darkness are over. ”We have been without light since 1972 due to no fault of ours and successive governments forgot us since thieves carted away the transformers and cut the overhead cables which supplied electricity to our communities,” says Steven Okai, a community leader, at Epedo, which is three-hour drive from Lagos, the sprawling commercial capital of Nigeria. Remembering with nostalgia the short but good old days when the village had electricity, Okai, 50, says: ”When we had electricity we watched television in our homes, enjoyed the use of refrigerators and our welders had business. But as soon as the cables and transformers were carted away by thieves we had no power and the welders left for neighbouring towns which have electricity to continue with their trade”. Okai says villagers who needed burglary proof for their buildings or had some welding work done during those difficult days had to travel to Ibilo town, some 10 kilometres away. ”Sometimes we used to go to Ibilo or Ogori, another town, with electricity to watch important events like the World Cup live on television. It was so bad,” he recalls. ”I thank President Olusegun Obasanjo and his administration for revisiting our case and reactivating – the long-abandoned electricity project – last year. Now, we do not have to go to Ibilo or Ogori because of electricity anymore,” he says, with a broad smile on his face. Caroline Demowo, who owns a bar, told IPS: ”My business is now booming. Before electricity was restored last year, I used to close as soon as it was getting dark at about 7 p.m. I also used to sell hot beer, which reduced the number of bottles of beer customers can consume. But, now, I have more customers because of cold beer and sometimes I close at midnight”. Demowo’s ”Cool Spot” bar is always full of customers, mostly farmers and teachers from both the village and neighbouring villages, who come to ”cool” down after the day’s hard work. Youths watch movies at three video shops in the village, things that were impossible in the past 20 years. Among the priority projects announced by President Obasanjo at his inauguration in May 1999, was how to solve the persistent problem of power outages and how to develop the rural areas through provision of electricity to the villages and towns under the rural electrification programme. State-owned National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), which earned the nickname ‘Never Expect Power Always’ for its inefficiency, had failed to satisfy consumers’ demands, leading to importation of generators from abroad. NEPA maintains eight power stations, with a combined output of 7,690 megawatts. Although this by far outstrips national demand estimated at 2,200 megawatts, output from the eight stations is below 1,500 megawatts as most of the stations are in poor condition. The government began correcting the situation in 1999 with the rehabilitation of the stations to ensure that within one year, electricity available for transmission and distribution nation-wide would rise to more than 4,000 megawatts. A recent report, on electricity consumption in Nigeria, by the U.S. Department of Commerce reveals that only 43 percent of the country’s population have access to electricity consumption. Government promised to address the disparity through rural electrification programme and the commercialisation of NEPA, with a projection that by 2010, about 90 percent of Nigeria’s population should have access to electricity. Government wants to ensure that, the per capita electricity consumption in Nigeria will increase from the current 161 kWh to 3,450 kWh, so that by the nation’s 50th independence anniversary (in 2010), 90 percent of Nigerians will have access to electricity as against the present 43 percent. In November, the government announced the award of contract worth 6,261,820,000 Naira (about 62 million U.S. dollars) for the execution of 352 new rural electrification projects in Nigeria. An official at the Ministry of Power and Steel, which oversees NEPA, says by 2000, 534 local government headquarters out of 775 had been electrified and connected to the national electricity grid, while work is at various stages of completion in 102 others. The official also says work would begin on the remaining 139 local government headquarters soon. In the past three years, NEPA received 674 million U.S. dollars to improve its services. Aliyu Modibbo, recently appointed Minister of State in the Ministry of Power and Steel, listed as his priority, the execution of all ongoing rural and abandoned electrification projects. ”The next four months will witness unprecedented execution of rural electrification projects in the country. My tenure may be considered as short, considering the fact that this administration is at the twilight of its four-year term, I believe that through your support and co-operation, we can achieve those milestones, which are imagined as unachievable,” he told staff of his ministry on assumption of office. ”I intend to vigorously execute the rural electrification projects which have either been abandoned or are yet to kick off. Most importantly, the constituency projects enumerated in the rural electrification project would be accorded top priority between now and the next three months,” he said. Modibbo added: ”I am bringing to bear in my pursuit of this Presidential mandate on the constituency projects, the philosophy of let there be light in our rural villages and streets”. The programme has also been applauded by Obasanjo’s political foes. Yerima Sani of the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP), who is the governor of the predominantly Muslim northern state of Zamfara, said during a courtesy call on the Minister of State for Power and Steel in Abuja last week, that the federal government’s rural electricity project was unprecedented in the history of Nigeria and praised the administration for connecting 510 rural communities with electricity in the past three years. ”Under the current democratic dispensation, more rural communities have enjoyed electricity supply than during the military era (the last one ended in 1999). And I commend the government for improving the lives of rural dwellers through the revival of abandoned rural electrification projects,” said Sani, whose state in 2000 spearheaded the controversial Islamic Sharia (law), which has now been adopted throughout the northern half of Nigeria. He said 17 rural electrification projects have been completed by the federal government in Zamfara state at1.2 billion Naira (about 12 million U.S. dollars).