For 11 months in 2021, Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria has been without electricity due to attacks on transmission lines by terrorist groups that have been waging war against the state for more than a decade. The attacks have impacted the government and businesses in a way that is more devastating to the residents than the havoc of the twelve-year insurgency. This report captures the deep-seated frustration of the war-weary Borno people, business owners, humanitarian organisations and government workers who used to depend on public electricity for daily operations. It is a riveting account of how hospitals, schools, courts and other public institutions struggle to deliver public service in the midst of endless human misery without electricity supply. Ajibola AMZAT reports.

Additional report by Zainab Yetunde ADAM (Maiduguri, Borno State)

‘Dead’ vaccines for patients

Hauwa Ahmad Dikwa, the deputy facility manager at Gamboru Primary Healthcare Centre in Maiduguri, Borno State, is a soft-spoken woman.

Yet the echo of her gentle voice was loud enough during an interview held in a small dingy room she uses as an office. The office is quiet and dark and has been without electricity for more than 11 months, except for an hour or two, a day.

In her 20 years of working as a midwife and nurse, Dikwa said she has never been so frustrated and helpless in a workplace. That is the situation the electricity outage in Borno has foisted on her since January 2021.

Though the federal and the state governments have invested billions of naira on electricity infrastructure in the North-East within the last six years, members of Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP) have targeted especially those ones in Borno State and destroyed them.

On January 26, the terrorist group attacked a 330KVA power transmission line along Maiduguri-Damaturu road, plunging several communities in 22 local government areas among the 27 local councils in Borno State into darkness.

Though Yola Electricity Distribution Company YEDC responded quickly and restored electricity in certain parts of the state, the fix was short-lived.

On Saturday, March 27, the terrorists planted Improvised Explosive Devices and destroyed the two newly erected towers. Six months later, they blew up other transmission lines.

The attacks have paralysed operations in hospitals, schools, markets, government offices and business centres, making the lives of residents more difficult even beyond the imagination of the terrorists, who since 2009 have waged what many people have described as ‘unjust war’ against the state known as Home of Peace.

When The ICIR visited on December 7, Gamboru Primary Healthcare Centre already had used up its one hour of electricity supply per day and would have to operate without power till the next day when the weak batteries of its two solar panels would have been re-charged.

Till then, Dikwa said there would be no electricity to handle even basic procedures in the clinic, let alone undertake child delivery. And there are many child deliveries in that part of the town because of the displaced people who have sought refuge in Gamboru after the Nigerians soldiers had driven insurgents outside Maiduguri, the capital city in 2012.

The health facility manager, Hajiya Zainab Bulama, estimated the average monthly deliveries at the clinic to be 30. The clinic record showed that 358 women have delivered at the healthcare centre between January and December 2021. And most of the deliveries occurred in a poorly-lit labour room, with needless strains on midwives and women in labour.

During emergencies, nurses at Gamboru Healthcare Centre use torchlights and lanterns to find their way around the dark labour room. Many times, the nurses have to rummage through the drug shelves in the dark to fetch prescribed medicine for patients. And some of the drugs are already expired due to poor storage caused by a lack of electricity.

Sensitive drugs administered on women in labour, such as Oxytocin and Zytocin injections, are supposed to be kept between two to eight-degree temperatures, but that is practically impossible at Gamboru PHC. The drugs are stored in a refrigerator rather too stuffy due to the implacable hot weather of Maiduguri which was at 35 degrees Celsius in December. In April, the weather is more fierce, rising up to 45 degrees Celsius.

At corners of the room where Dikwa was seated lie disused scanning and suction machines, a film of dust has settled on them. She said the hospital has stopped using the equipment since the solar energy can no longer power them because the batteries are weak. Nurses, therefore, have instead resorted to using a manual suction machine which, according to her, may discomfort mother and child, or cause infection for both during delivery.

“But a manual suction machine is better than nothing,” she said with a sad smile.

Years back, a charity group donated generator to complement the solar power at the healthcare centre, but nobody bothers to switch it on because there is no imprest to buy fuel to operate the gen.

“Most times we are on our own,” Dikwa said.

Bulama and Dikwa are the only two qualified midwives at Gamboru health centre; the rest of the staff are unskilled community health workers and lab attendants. Though the government pays their salaries as at when due, but there is much less the staff could do without electricity, Bulama said.

READ MORE HERE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/maiduguri-troubled-city-in-darkness-part-one/

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Islam =darkness, violence and everything Evil.even your foolish allah knows it's a bastard