Being a social critic in Nigeria
Is hard work. On the up side, one never runs out of material, nothing like
writer’s block for the critic in this country.
Today I will tell you about how I
spent my Saturday and you can decide if my opening statements are true or
false.
On Thursday (14/06/2012) I got
home from work and found out there was a power outage (nothing new about that),
so I promptly switched on my alternative source of power. Sometime around midnight
a loud alarm woke me up; this alarm signified that power had been restored by
the unfortunately named ‘Power Holding Company of Nigeria’. Apparently people
have resorted to these alarmingly loud ‘alarms’ so that they can wake up and
switch off their generating sets when power is restored in the middle of the
night. Anyway I was still in darkness
despite the information conveyed by my neighbour’s alarm; I went to check if I
had switched my power source from generator to ‘NEPA’ and I had. So why was I
in darkness then? I couldn’t have run out of electricity credit because I had
recently recharged my prepaid meter. I was in this state of confusion till the
next day and PHCN had chosen this precise period to supply regular electricity
thereby rubbing salt into my wounds!
To cut a long story short, I
waited till Saturday to investigate the mysterious outage and guess what? I had
been disconnected from the main power supply to my close. Now the only reason
for a disconnection is an unpaid bill and as I no longer have a post paid
meter, it is impossible for me to
owe electricity bills. Foolishly, I thought that there must have been some
mistake so I took off to the PHCN undertaking (I wonder why their offices are
called ‘undertakings’) in the area and lodged a complaint. I was expecting a
shamefaced apology at the very least for this high level of incompetent
customer service. Well let’s just say things don’t work that way in Nigeria.
The person in charge of disconnections (curiously designated as the marketing
officer) boldly announced to me that he was aware of the disconnection and the fact that I was not owing a
dime. So why was I disconnected? Alas I was guilty by association: my neighbour
was allegedly in arrears of N150, 000 (that’s about two year’s worth of
electricity bills unpaid yet they’ve been enjoying the same supply of electricity
as everyone else for as long as I can
remember but that’s a story for another day).
By this time, the only thought that kept crossing my mind was “I am
living in a crazy country”. Since I had been given an unreasonable explanation
for my disconnection, I decided to cancel it out with my own reasonable demand
– “please come and reconnect my electricity”.
Unfortunately reasonableness doesn’t always beget reason so I got a more
unreasonable solution – “Madam go and separate your wires from your neighbours”
For a split second, I imagined myself on a ladder with electrical wire all
around me trying to “separate my wire from the neighbours” You see what being
around unreasonable people does to you? You begin to think unreasonable
thoughts too! By this time I felt like screaming but since I was the reasonable
party in this discussion, I had to keep my cool.
Anyway, I brought myself down to
earth and asked the next reasonable question – “so who will undertake this
erm…separation?” The marketing officer nodded at me like a teacher who has
finally been able to get through to a particularly dim student. He then beckons
to two young men who had been hovering about like vultures waiting for the
final death throes of their prey. The young
men were supposedly electricians who were going to ‘help’ me sort out my rather
‘difficult’ situation. They eagerly got into my car and followed me home
ostensibly to go and assess the amount of work required. Then they started
their assessment and I noticed that they were looking a bit disturbed so the
following conversation ensued (I am going to name them ‘Good cop’ and ‘Bad cop’
because they acted out the good cop/bad cop routine with me):
Good Cop: Madam, we are going to sort this thing
out today
Bad
Cop: (interjecting) But it won’t be easy o, it’s not going to be easy at
all (he shakes his head regretfully)
Good Cop: As long as madam will give us money to
buy the wire, no problem
Bad Cop: Remember we
have to rent a ladder too
Good Cop: Madam don’t
worry, we will make sure that we conclude today
Me (madam): So how
much wire do you need?
Bad
Cop: A lot o! Can’t you see
that we have to go through about 4 houses before we get to you?
Me: So how
much will this cost?
Bad Cop: N5000 for
labour
Me:
No I can’t pay
that, after all I do not owe any money (still trying to appeal to reason)
Bad
Cop: Madam, that is not my
problem, I’m just trying to help you. This is private work not ‘NEPA’ work.
Good
Cop: (addresses his colleague in Yoruba in an ‘appealing’ tone) let’s
just manage N3000
Bad
Cop: Ok Madam, we’ll accept
N3000 but you have to pay N7000 for two bundles of wire
Me: (Spluttering with
outrage) you expect me to cough up 10,000 to reconnect my electricity when it
should not have been disconnected in the first instance?!!
Good
Cop: Madam we are only trying to
‘help’ you o
Bad
Cop: Let’s go jare, I don’t have time, I have work to
do.
So that was that, no electricity for me yet. I couldn’t help marveling
at the audacity of the two guys; in fact, I was so shocked, I had to laugh. I
decided to shift my negotiations to a higher level, so I called the Landlord of
the house (my Dad) and I explained everything to him because I knew he was
bound to know someone higher up in the PHCN office. He promptly called the
Manager of the place and told her the situation, and then he asked me to go
back to the office and speak to the lady in charge.
I went there boldly, under the illusion that a management level staff
would handle everything with dispatch without demanding any gratification,
after all it was their mistake not mine.
I met the lady and she mouthed the same unreasonable explanation about
my neighbour’s indebtedness (whatever happened to confidentiality?) albeit with
a caveat “If I had known it was Lawyer’s house, I wouldn’t have disconnected it”. She assured me that she would sort it out; she even graciously
offered to ‘help’ me get some wire so that I wouldn’t have to pay for it. She
then lowered her voice and said to me conspiratorially “you’ll have to give
N2000 to the boys, you know they are not supposed to be at work, I’m just going
to appeal to them on your behalf” For some reason, I felt embarrassed for her,
I felt ashamed of what we had become as a people but I gave her the N2000 even
though I didn’t see the ‘boys’ she was referring to. As if that was not bad
enough, she also informed me that I’d have to pay the person she would assign
to the job as it would take up a lot of his time. I wanted to ask what the
N2000 I had just given to her was for but I was too tired, too disillusioned
and even too embarrassed to ask so I kept quiet and nodded.
In the end, the electrician did come and he also promptly announced to
me that it was going to be a ‘difficult’ task so… I understood and I just
nodded wearily because I knew that there was no reasoning with greed and
corruption.
My electricity was eventually reconnected and I paid even though I shouldn’t
have but it was either that or live without electricity indefinitely. I had
plans to meet with a friend on Saturday but I didn’t get to go because I was
dealing with PHCN. To crown what I choose to call a ‘wonderful’ day, as soon as
the power was restored, I switched on the pumping machine (only Nigerians will get
this) and you know what? The pumping machine was instantly destroyed by a power
surge. I had to take the day off work on
Monday to sort this out…
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