"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter'' -Martin Luther King Jr.
I walked into a business centre at Alimosho area of Lagos the other day, simply to have my phone charged because as usual no electricity but they had their generator on. After about 20 minutes, a young lady walked in, exchanged pleasantries with the person in charge of the centre. Afterwards, she placed a call to someone and, she passed the phone to the office person, who announced to us that electricity would be restored for 15 minutes, because a staff of the electricity office needed to do photocopies and because he doesn't want to pay extra charge. They, the electricity board, in their own wisdom decided to restore light to achieve just that!
I couldn't believe what I heard, it was like a bad dream. Inside of me, i prayed it was not true, but in a moment light was restored. After a while, the staff of the electricity office strolled in and got the photocopies done! He announced so openly that the light will soon go off again. I sat stuck to my sit and wondered, what a life! Soon after he left, behold,the light went off. It became a discussion of sort at the business centre. I didn't utter a word, i left so disappointed and felt so unsafe in my country!
These thoughts probes my mind; first, simply because of photocopies by staff of the electricity office, light was restored for about 15minutes...To my mind, so many untorward things will be going on in that sector, which is common knowledge though. How safe are the common, ordinary citizens of this nation? They cut light so indiscriminately, restore light when they feel like, causing more harm than good. Stories abound...I now know firsthand, what majority of businesses suffer daily because of lack of electricity and the waywardness of these people who man electricity distribution and what have you.
We clamour for advancement and all, yet things like this is ongoing? I shudder to think of the untold hardship we all endure or been subjected to because of the failure of government to arrest the rot in the power sector. Businesses, factories, industries are messed up daily, simply because government to my mind, simply look the other way, and we are subjected to living under harsh conditions with a sing song of no electricity, one reason or the other is always given as an excuse why we cannot have light for 24 hours. They say it is the vandals, it is saboteurs and all sorts of rhetoric. It is simply bad leadership, look at Men so entrusted with sensitive positions during the last administration enmeshed in corruption. The figures from EFCC reveals, how insensitive our so called leaders can be. Until, we start teaching the subject 'Corruption' as a subject in our schools, before we can seriously say we are evolving, because it is becoming a plaque of sort.
