”Up NEPA!” Joe screamed as the light bulb in the sitting room blinked.
”Don't shout or else they will take it back” Anita, his big sister said to him. *”You know that there has not been an electric power supply for days. Let's observe if this one would last” she advised and Joe nodded his head in affirmation.
Those were my neighbour's kids Anita and Joe, hoping for a stable power supply so that they could watch their cartoons on Disney Junior but just as she went to put on the television switch, the power supply went out.
”It's lights out!” Joe screamed again but this time, there was a trace of disappointment laced in his voice. I knew what that meant, the power supply company had just broken a little boy's heart.
Anita was not too surprised. From her reaction, I could tell that she was expecting such to play out after all, it was a normal phenomenon in my area.
The power supply system in my area is just weird. For a lack of a good word to describe it, I dare say that it is epileptic in nature. This is because there might be power outage for weeks and when the power supply is restored, it would flicker non stop. We call that flickering …flashing 😁.
This has been going on even before I moved down to that area. From my inquiry, I learnt that the power supply division in charge of that area suggested to the whole community that they should contribute money to buy their own transformer, so that my area can also have electric power supply. The people in the area agreed and they contributed the sum of one hundred and twenty thousand naira.
The power supply division head assigned to my area came, took the money and in a week's time he brought the transformer to our area. Now with our very own transformer, you would think that electricity would be constant or at least consistent but that was not the case at all. The people said they were only having power supply for six hours only and guess what ... .the electricity comes only at night when many people would already be asleep.
This was what I came to meet when I relocated to that area. What I did to adjust and adapt was to plug in some of my gadgets to the switch before going to bed. This way when the light comes late at night, it would function in charging my devices and gadgets rather than go to waste.
Some neighbours I know of have learnt how to stay awake till the power supply comes on around 12am to 1am. Then they make use of it to cook their meals for the next day. This is done to cut the cost of buying cooking gas.
The annoying part of all this is that despite the epileptic power supply in my area, the electricity bill is still so high. For only 36 hours of electricity on 30 days, the electricity bill would read ten thousand naira per house. It is that frustrating.
How can it be made better?
Truthfully, I doubt that the power supply in my area can ever be constant or consistent and this is because I learnt that the electricity is being sold to other neighbouring countries and cities. Benin Republic borders my country on the west and I live very close to the border. Rumor has it that they pay heavily to have electricity from my country
So to respond to the above question, I feel that the government should invest largely in solar panels and encourage citizens to switch to using solar panels and inverters. Doing this would help the masses during times of no electric power supply.
I also believe that there are other better means of generating steady power supply and this should be looked into and invested in.
Some citizens already have fuel and diesel generators which they make use during times of power supply scarcity but recently with the high rate of fuel, many are not able to afford buying fuel consistently. Hence, my proposition for solar panels and inverters and for the government to invest in other reliable sources of power supply.
Thank you all for reading. This is my entry to the #aprilinleo initiative for day 8.
Images used are mine.