Electricity is the bane of almost every neighborhood in Nigeria.
It is either they are battling a decayed transformer, stolen cable, or epileptic power supply.
In most cases, the residents do not even help matters as they are culpable in the Power problem.
In every area or neighborhood where they seem to be battling with electrical distribution, the renumeration the electrical distribution company realize from these areas are usually very low.
It is no news that some Nigerians has resorted to bypass even with their prepaid meters. Thus, they use electricity for free without paying for it, which is one of the major culprit of poor power supply.
The thing is, the more electricity tariff the Power company is able to scoop from a particular area, the more resources will be made available for a reasonable amount or hours of power to be supplied.
In my previous neighborhood where I recently relocated from, we were basically contributing thousands of Naira individually to fix our transformer that will always get bad after two months. Before I had relocated, we had stayed a month plus without electricity as everyone was tired of the nonsense.
There was a time a new transformer was available and the Power committee of my neighbourhood was bidding for it. But we lost that bid as the transformer was given to another community who were up to date with the payment of their electricity bill.
SECURITY AND LAWS
Few days after I had gotten home, something happened with the security in my neighborhood were we live.
Now I have been in this neighborhood since childhood and I have seen first hand lots of failed attempt at security.
You know, we have had a long standing law, where by keke Napep are not allowed after a certain hour just cars and the cars also have their time limit.
Me I do not have a car and I use to be a night traveller back then. I was one time coming from Lagos with lots of lighting that would be needed in Sapele for an offshore job.
I had gotten to my area quite late and was locked out. All attempts to get in with the keke drop I was in, proved abortive as the security people asked me to be carrying the lighting one by one to my house that is very far away in the next street.
I placed a call to the security chairman and he told me the law is the law and it cannot be bent to suit me. As much as I wanted to get it hot with them, I just let it go and called my people at home to come assist in carrying the lightings so we could be fast.
In another completely different scenario, we have this one time house of assembly member in my street. In the past when he was still in office, he was coming back from their usual late night meetings and he was locked out.
He could not get any security at the gate so he ordered his guards to break the gate key.
They did, gained access and no one said anything. Infact he disbanded the security at the time and for a long time the street gates were left opened.
Fast forward to recent times, we now have a vigilante system that ought to be very rigid with the law.
We also now have two hotels in my street and every dead in the night we will be hearing keke sound coming to drop and pick people up.
The same law that could not be bent to suit me a private individual in distress, is now bent to suit those in business. More painfully, in a street we are all residence of, paying equal security fee.
The unfair treatment that finally broke the Camel's back was, I recently got to know some top profile residents has a copy of the street gate key, of which they can access the street at anytime.
For a very long time I have held on to this grievances, waiting on that day we'd have a neighborhood meeting so I can unleash it.
Then the unimaginable happened, the cable to the transformer mounted in my street got stolen. This unfortunate incidence, has caused some of the residents connected to it to experience blackout. Yesterday being a public holiday, a neighborhood meeting was called solely for that incidences but I had felt it would be good time to air my grievances so I got dressed to attend.
Unfortunately as I was headed there, I saw people leaving as the meeting was over. But as I was taking a walk back home, I over heard some of the people who attended the meeting saying they had resolved that the security will be disbanded because we can't be paying heavily for security and still get our items stolen and the transformer tempered with.
I also overhead another group discussing the amount of money needed to replace the stolen cable is One million, five hundred thousand Naira only, which is a lot of money. Personally, I feel the cables are still somewhere and the so called security people just want to make some cool cash off the neighborhood.
The circumstances surrounding the cable theft is just too clean to not be an inside job. Regardless, disbanding the security is not at all a wise decision either especially at this trying times.
PS
ALL IMAGES ARE MINE
This post is a response to the April day 9 inleo prompt. Feel free to participate here