#ABUJABLACKOUT!!!!

. #Abuja Blackout

I can honestly say I have never been so depressed before….

#Day Three of the #Abuja Black out has left me feeling listless, restless and a depression like never before has seeped into my soul. I am honestly thinking about moving out of my house. Call us naïve or whatever but when moving out from Lagos we sold all the generators and came to the land of promise- Abuja about 12 years ago. And thus, the fact that in the heart of Abuja we are a family living without a generator and suffering the scourge of regular blackouts in Nigeria. But none has ever been so demoralizing as the past few days since the SPDC has decided to close down % gas stations for maintenance and Abuja has been hard hit by this move. I don’t know if its in retaliation for being in close proximity to GEJ or because I live in “Maitama” (where it seems every poorercitizen of the country seems to think we are eating blood money) but I am here to reiterate that the “rich” also cry!

All I know is that all my appliances are dead (the hopeless BB first) except the beloved  iPad (thank you, Steve RIP), the fridge is completely empty, there is no running water (because we can’t pump any…I won’t start on the water board) and I have so many candles that they have lost all sense of romanticism!

I know many people reading this will look down their noses at me as a pampered ajebutter but I will have you know that I am not….the point being that if such people actually faced such hardships, trust me, this country wont be where it is today. Suddenly I feel such empathy for the people in my village, somewhere in backwater Kogi State where the last time I checked (circa 2006) there wasn’t even a connection to the National Grid! No wonder there is so much demotivation this country, if in the 20^th century our counterparts are celebrating much more advanced victories and we have yet to even provide our own selves with the basic amenities of life.

I ask GEJ or whoever claims to be in charge of something, is this the minimal load shedding promised us in your Power Road Map? Or is this the marked improvement in power supply in 2010? Is this your fresh air of change? Please we need a reprieve in this country!

As each day passes and we read the paper we begin to wonder at the foresight of our leaders, the fuel subsidy being removed, the minimum wage “increasing’, and its consequent effects. The privatization of the power industry which will mean an increase in tariff rates and thus the institutionalization of such agencies as NELMCO which is a parallel with the PPPRA; after a certain number of years does this mean that such a subsidy will removed and the citizenry will once again start scrambling to pay up their bills. Even on the account of a subsidy for the lower earning citizenry, how do we determine those? As we don’t have a social security system that will help us determine those most deserving of such a scheme?

Pertinent issues for discussion… Come and see how we can make a change.

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