Article written by award-winning writer
Chimamanda Adichie, originally published on New
York Times . Interesting read. Find below...
We call it light; “electricity” is too sterile a
word, and “power” too stiff, for this Nigerian
phenomenon that can buoy spirits and
smother dreams. Whenever I have been away
from home for a while, my first question upon
returning is always: “How has light been?”
The response, from my gateman, comes in
mournful degrees of a head shake.
Bad. Very bad.

The quality is as poor as the supply: Light bulbs
dim like tired, resentful candles. Robust fans slow
to a sluggish limp. Air-conditioners bleat and
groan and make sounds they were not made to
make, their halfhearted cooling leaving the air
clammy. In this assault of low voltage, the
compressor of an air-conditioner suffers — the
compressor is its heart, and it is an expensive
heart to replace. Once, my guest room air-
conditioner caught fire. The room still bears the
scars, the narrow lines between floor tiles smoke-
stained black.

Sometimes the light goes off and on and off and
on, and bulbs suddenly brighten as if jerked
awake, before dimming again. Things spark and
snap. A curl of smoke rises from the water heater.
I feel myself at the mercy of febrile malignant
powers, and I rush to pull my laptop plug out of
the wall. Later, electricians are summoned and
they diagnose the problem with the ease of a long
acquaintance. The current is too high or too low,
never quite right. A wire has melted. Another
compressor will need to be replaced.
For succor, I turn to my generator, that large
Buddha in a concrete shed near the front gate. It
comes awake with a muted confident hum, and the
difference in effect is so obvious it briefly startles:
Light bulbs become brilliant and air-conditioners
crisply cool.

The generator is electricity as electricity should be.
It is also the repository of a peculiar psychology of
Nigerian light: the lifting of mood. The generator is
lord of my compound. Every month, two men filled
with mysterious knowledge come to minister to it
with potions and filters. Once, it stopped working
and I panicked. The two men blamed dirty diesel,
the sludgy, slow, expensive liquid wreathed in
conspiracy theories. (We don’t have regular
electricity, some say, because of the political
influence of diesel importers.) Now, before my
gateman feeds the diesel into the generator, he
strains it through a cloth and cleans out bits of
dirt. The generator swallows liters and liters of
diesel. Each time I count out cash to buy yet
another jerrycan full, my throat tightens.

I spend more on diesel than on food.

My particular misfortune is working from home. I
do not have a corporate office to escape to, where
the electricity is magically paid for. My ideal of
open windows and fresh, breathable air is
impossible in Lagos’s seething heat. (Leaving
Lagos is not an option. I love living here, where
Nigeria’s energy and initiative are concentrated,
where Nigerians bring their biggest dreams.) To
try to cut costs — sustainably, I imagine — I buy
an inverter. Its silvery, boxlike batteries make a
corner of the kitchen look like a physics lab.

The inverter’s batteries charge while there is light,
storing energy that can be used later, but therein
lies the problem: The device requires electricity to
be able to give electricity. And it is fragile,
helpless in the face of the water pump and
microwave. Finally, I buy a second generator, a
small, noisy machine, inelegant and scrappy. It
uses petrol, which is cheaper than diesel, and can
power lights and fans and freezers but only one
air-conditioner, and so I move my writing desk
from my study to my bedroom, to consolidate cool
air.

Day after day, I awkwardly navigate between my
sources of light, the big generator for family
gatherings, the inverter for cooler nights, the small
generator for daytime work.

Like other privileged Nigerians who can afford to, I
have become a reluctant libertarian, providing my
own electricity, participating in a precarious
frontier spirit. But millions of Nigerians do not
have this choice. They depend on the
malnourished supply from their electricity
companies.

In 2005, a law was passed to begin privatizing the
generation and distribution of electricity, and
ostensibly to revamp the old system rooted in
bureaucratic rot. Ten years on, little has changed.
Most of the companies that produce electricity
from gas and hydro sources, and all of the
distribution companies that serve customers, are
now privately owned. But the link between them —
the transmission company — is still owned by the
federal government.

I cannot help but wonder how many medical
catastrophes have occurred in public hospitals
because of “no light,” how much agricultural
produce has gone to waste, how many students
forced to study in stuffy, hot air have failed
exams, how many small businesses have
foundered. What greatness have we lost, what
brilliance stillborn? I wonder, too, how differently
our national character might have been shaped,
had we been a nation with children who took light
for granted, instead of a nation whose toddlers
learn to squeal with pleasure at the infrequent
lighting of a bulb.

As we prepare for elections next month, amid
severe security concerns, this remains an
essential and poignant need: a government that
will create the environment for steady and stable
electricity, and the simple luxury of a monthly bill.


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