Notes on
the North American Blackout
By Tive
Denedo
It is instructive
to begin this debut on the reflection on Energy issues in Nigeria
on the power outage that affected North America especially cities
like New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Ottawa, Toronto.
Ordinarily, a power outage in faraway North America should be
of no consequence to us in Nigeria in another continent entirely.
However, when properly analysed, the event holds a significant
value for Nigerians.
The power
outage brings into very sharp relief how we live very dangerously
as a people without the slightest understanding as to how far
we have actually devalued life in this country and reduced the
meaning of existence to the barest level. I have known that we
live on the precipice but not to the extent that we live daily
on the verge of extinction until this power outage. It took only
a day of power outage for the governments of the two North American
countries to declare a state of emergency while for upward of
a decade we have lived in conditions far worse than what occurred
without our government being bothered.
By way of
comparison to what happened, it therefore means that we have never
had light in this nation. We have been living in darkness and
it has become a way of life and a culture Unlike the New York
incidence where vision suddenly went bleak, our vision has been
darkened for so long that we sometimes do not even know when there
is no power supply. The joke is on us and it is an affirmation
of a joke making the round that if you are desirous of knowing
a Nigerian in the gathering of nationalities, switch off the light
for a moment and put it on.
The Nigerian
is said to always unconsciously shout Up NEPA. It is amazing that
an institution that should be given the thumbs down is being hailed
at the most inconvenient time. There has always been this sense
of misplaced pride that our ability to live in hard circumstances
and always under stress is a sign of strength but the lessons
from this events had shown that we are not living but dying instalmentally
as soon as we are born into this land It only indicates how very
short, brutish nasty and harsh our lives are in this place. For
a people who placed quality premium on life, all facilities that
depend on energy to function were promptly shut down. There were
no recourse to half measures through the use of energy generating
sets from which you cannot extract a guarantee that they will
function properly even with the general fear of environmental
pollutions. For two very highly industrialised nation who have
between them some of the best engineering technology in the production
of generators, it was only in the Toronto Stock Exchange that
a generator was said to have been put on to provide power.
This is organisation
and coordination at its best. They are aware that in this age
of sophistication, automation, and computerisation only the best
facilities should power human needs and requirements. if the sanctity
and dignity of human life is to be preserved and maintained. It
would be rare for such a decision to shut down facilities to have
been taken in Nigeria. The president said not too long ago that
before his assumption of power that 120 or more million Nigerians
were sharing 1000Megawatts or 1Gigawatts of energy in this country.
According to him, this had improved to about 4000 Megawatts or
4 Gigawatts between 1999 and 2003. To attained this level of improvement
in energy generation, NEPA; the state energy generating monopoly
has cost the Nigerian taxpayer a whooping N300 billion.
A simple computation
brings the cost of generating a watt of energy to N100,000. It
is a record cost of making electricity in the world. The most
expensive cost of making electricity today, which is solar radiation
still, falls miserably below at about N450 per watt. With such
an antecedent, it could be understood why our government will
not even be moved to protect the citizens. Perhaps that is the
way it goes for people who always rely on all forms of sub standard
alternatives as solutions to their challenges. The story is told
of a Detroit suburb resident that was woken up from her afternoon
slumber when every appliance powered through the energy grid suddenly
stopped to function. If she were a Lagos suburb resident, she
will unconsciously pick a hand fan and painfully fan herself back
to a fitful sleep. Cell phone services would hardly have been
interrupted not with all kinds of generators strategically located
across the country and deafening us with the usual high decibel
of noises that emanates from them every day.
Quiet many
other significant issues evolved in that first day of the disaster
that struck North America. The grid that collapsed was just the
Niagara-Mohawk power and not the entire grid system of the United
States or Canada. In essence, power generation is so decentralised
that it is impossible for the whole nation's energy system to
be disrupted in one fell swoop. The other is that the cause of
failure was immediately identified and traced to the power station
fire in New York State. It was not attributed to some phantom
political enemies or disgruntled individuals and saboteurs are
working to discredit government .
Another important
lesson especially for government and their spin-doctors is the
urgency in responding to allay the fears of the people. In an
appearance that is commensurate with the magnitude of the problem,
it was the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg himself who spoke
on the matter and he spoke sincerely and admitted where the fault
occurred, what is was all about as well as emphasising that he
does not know how long the outage may last. That technical detail
is not his own to know immediately until experts have assessed
the extent of the damaged and given precise and concise report.
It is a much honest approach for our leaders to learn from instead
of telling barefaced lies and committing themselves to a timetable
over which they have little or no control for providing uninterrupted
power supply to Nigerians in three years. Four years along and
still counting we are yet to find a solution to the vandalisation
of our energy generating facilities.
