When Power Becomes a Privilege: Life Without Electricity in Nigeria

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Nigeria is one funny country especially when it comes to electricity, they always get everything wrongly even in this aspect despite continuous promises that there will be 24/7 power supply, every election, they make this promise without fulfilling it. Many communities have been existing for years without light and I do wonder how they manage especially in the rural areas, some don't even have electric pole let alone transformers yet they have no choice but to keep hoping that light or government will remember them one day. I remember when I visited this particular village, if permitted, I would have wave off the journey and stay back but somehow I went with my 3 power banks with the hope that I wouldn't drain the batteries during these periods. I was amazed when I got there, no power line, no transformer and really poor mobile networks, once it is night, they will just put on their local lantern and they will be fine.

Unlike me that can't do without electricity, if they took it off for just 24hours, I will start feeling sick. Before I even decide to rent an apartment, I always ask three questions which are very important to me, how good or bad is the mobile networks? Do they have stable light and how many times daily and weekly? If the answers don't sit well with me, I will exit. I was happy when they announced the band A stuff and my area is among, even though they got high tariff due to daily light, I wasn't bothered as long as we will keep having that daily stable light but luck didn't shine on us because I later figured out we were sharing a transformer. When I moved in, we had light almost everyday which I got use to until they announced in the community group that the transformer is getting weaker everyday and we need to start rationing electricity.

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I also found out 300 houses were using 1 transformer and because of that, they will be doing electricity timetable of 2 days on and a day off for 100 houses, during the off days, you will see other street having light and you will be wondering what to do, at some point I was like, If I have money, I will either get a small room in each street with light during our off days just for charging purpose or make friends in each street for the same purpose but it is a stupid idea. When it comes to bills, this is one aspect people are afraid of, the price is high and one need to be careful of their light consumption or they will be in debt, if you visit a band A user apartment, you will see their bulb or things they aren't using at the moment off because they don't want to drain their unit and if you mistakenly on stuff down, they will either bite or shout at you.

I once remember when my former street transformer was stolen and that was one of the reason I left the area. I was there for like 2 years plus, everything was going well, good network, stable lights until devil apprentices decided to strike, I don't even know how they manage to pull it off because I do hear people say transformer do shock when touched but it didn't this time around, first of all we noticed we didn't have light that night and when I woke up in the morning just to see what is going on then I saw people gathering at the transformer area and when I asked someone what is going on, he said some important part of the transformer was stolen over night, I was like "Ahh", these parts were expensive and without it, we didn't have light for months, the rich people were putting on generators, some switch to solar power and those that don't have money ended up staying in darkness but I disappear for weeks, moved to a friend area then after 3 months, I had to relocate to a new area immediately my house rent expired, staying without electricity in this age and time is kind of terrible especially when you know how big the bills is if you have to run on daily fuel.