Lagos’s blackout nightmare: the suburb that’s been in darkness for five years
For Lagosians, electricity shortages can mean cooking by torchlight, or companies spending a shocking 70% of the budget on diesel … and some neighbourhoods have spent half a decade with no power at all.


When the electric transformer in his neighbourhood was vandalised five years ago, Akinnuoye Olagunju, then 21, didn’t think they would never have power again.

Officials from the energy utility demanded that his father, as well as each of the 2,000 or so people in Oreta, pay a communal bribe to repair the damage: 2,000 naira ($10) each, a lot of money in this sleepy and impoverished fishing village.

They refused. Five years later, the power is still off.

Olagunju eventually moved out of his family house.

“The heat was too much,” he says, now 27, and an official of the Lagos State Traffic Management Agency. “Everyone was having rashes and the NEPA people [energy officials] refused to come and fix anther one for free.”

What do you do when it’s 30C at 11pm, you haven’t had power for days … and your generator decides to pack up?
Olawale Adetula

Oreta sits off the lagoon in Ikorodu, a suburb of Lagos. Distant from the city centre, it receives little government attention or policing. Residents rely on mini generators, rechargeable torches and the lights from their mobile phones.

What’s worse is at night, under cover of darkness, “land grabbers” – young men who use physical intimidation to muscle into construction projects, extort scared residents and even sell land they don’t own – move in to squat and vandalise properties.

Olagunju is one of the millions of people in Lagos whose collective power needs have effectively overwhelmed the grid – despite the fact that Nigeria is, by far, the largest oil producer in Africa.

Even in parts of the city that are connected to the grid, power outages are regular and random. Many middle class families own an inverter; poorer Lagosians, like many of those in Ikorodu, resort to minuscule “I-pass-my-neighbour generators”, so called because they give the owners an illusion of superiority over their fellow residents, though a single tank can power a small household for only about three hours.
Power sockets in Lagos.
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Power sockets in Lagos, where electricity cuts out daily.

Some neighbourhoods have never even been on the grid – including parts of Ibeju Lekki, a suburb to the east of the posh island districts that is home to some 117,481 people, according to the 2006 census. It’s a working class commuter district, with some farming and fishing, and where the constant droning of generators is a familiar sound.

And if the generator breaks, or you run out of money to power it? Olawale Adetula, a 30-year-old media strategist who lives in Yaba, once slept the whole night in his car with the air conditioning on.

“What do you do when it’s 30C at 11pm, you haven’t had power for days … and your generator decides to pack up?” Adetula asks. “Oh and you have a career-defining meeting at 8am the next morning? Your car becomes your bedroom for the night.”

Things got so bad that the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was nicknamed “Never Expect Power Always, Please Light Candle” by frustrated citizens. The government tackled this problem by renaming it the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), as a first step towards unbundling and privatising it. In 2013, the PHCN’s distribution and generation arms were privatised.

There isn’t light for 12 hours so we have to run our generator for six-plus hours a day
Kelechi Ibekwe

Babatunde Fashola, the former governor of Lagos who is now the federal minister of works, power and housing, also commissioned five power plants in six years, and Lagos state is also home to Egbin power plant, Nigeria’s largest.

Yet the power still goes out daily. Some blame the deteriorating infrastructure, which wasn’t privatised. Others such as Eyo Ekpo, a former commissioner with the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), say it’s a matter of demand outstripping supply.

“Privatisation was never sold as, nor is it meant to be, some kind of silver bullet that solves all problems overnight,” Ekpo says. “Unfortunately, very few are willing to appreciate the time it takes both to go through any reform process and to build heavy engineering infrastructure such as gas pipelines, power plants, transmission lines, towers and substations. It is part of a reform programme that, as with all infrastructure sector reform programmes, requires time, competent execution, private sector finance and strong, properly focused political will to ensure success.”

But many argue that perverse government regulations restrict new entrants into Nigeria’s cosy energy market.

A source at a transparency organisation with knowledge of the energy industry says: “The electricity regulations make it difficult for new entrants to set up large power plants. If the highest they can generate is, for example, 10MW, then it must all be bought by one [industrial] customer. For example, if Unilever and PZ are in the same area and each require 5MW daily, you can’t build one power station of 10MW and sell to both of them.”

The stated aim is to prevent “proliferation”, but it is likely that the regulators are simply aiming to ensure that only their cronies get licenses and profit. Either way, the gaps don’t get plugged.

The consequences for the health, income and livelihood of Lagosians are far-reaching.
Lagos at night.

At night, only a small fraction of Lagos is lit up. Some parts of the city are not connected to the electrical grid at all. Photograph: Alamy

“I have had to spend a lot of money in getting an inverter to reduce what I spend on fuel for my generator,” says Osikhena Dirisu, a radio personality at the popular Beat FM, who lives in one of the estates next to the headquarters of Chevron. “The inverter is noiseless and cost effective, because I was spending an average of 8,000 to 10,000 naira monthly on fuel.”

The Beat FM joined telecommunications giant MTN in shutting down entirely for several hours during a fuel drought in May 2015. MTN, which boasts 62 million subscribers, spends a shocking 70% of its operating expenditure on diesel, more than 10m litres a month.

The situation is also frustrating for young entrepreneurs, says Kelechi Ibekwe, a 22-year-old animator. “Light is a crucial part of my work and basically my house is my workspace. There’s this new policy of light from 7pm to 7am in my area, and that puts a strain on me – because from 7am to 7pm, my most productive hours, I’ll have to do something else. My work involves about 30-plus hours of non-stop computer activity. There isn’t light for 12 so we have to run our generator for six-plus hours a day.”

Necessity breeds innovation. Boluwatife Soloye, a 22-year-old model, recalls one day in secondary school. “I always left things until the last minute, and so I assumed I’d be able to iron in the morning – but when I woke up, there was no electricity. I panicked and started brainstorming. Eventually, I took an old iron in the house, placed it on the gas cooker and used it to iron. I had to wipe, iron, replace on cooker, repeat.”
How is Lagos changing?
The new governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has vowed to fix the problem. His Light Up Lagos project aims to ensure 24-hour uninterrupted power supply to the whole city within two years. He also promised street lighting for all the city’s roads by December 2015. Although some roads remain unlit, there has been real progress, including the illumination of the Third Mainland Bridge, the most travelled in the country.

But the 67 communities of Ibeju Lekki that have been in darkness for five years have yet to be connected to the national grid – though plans by Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man, to build a $9bn refinery nearby should encourage the effort.

In the vacuum, private corporations have seen an opportunity. Mobile phone manufacturer Tecno installed a series of solar energy-powered streetlights in Computer Village, the IT hub on the mainland district; American rapper Akon has been the public face of a solar-powered football pitch project, sponsored by Shell. There is skepticism, however, that these initiatives are anything more than publicity stunts.

Neither businesses nor individuals care who provides the power, as long as someone eventually does.

Motunrayo Gomez, a communications employee, describes how her brother decided to splurge on solar panels the day after mistakenly spicing his soup with kerosene while cooking by torch during a blackout.

“It was one of those periods of fuel scarcity, where a bachelor’s hungry stomach cannot wait for light to return,” Gomez says. “It was funny and sad at the time, but this is Lagos.”


http://fafricanergy.com/2016/02/27/lagoss-blackout-nightmare-the-suburb-thats-been-in-darkness-for-five-years/