₦airaland Forum

obesse:
The offer is still on the table.
I am switching off my phone now. I have an important meeting scheduled for tomorrow.

Nice to see you are running away.

As for me, power must be sold at a profit, even if it makes you offer me job after imaginary job.

(I'm employed by the way, son, and I get paid well, because the business I work for is allowed to set its prices).

nairalanda1:
Thank you

But in a way, I understand them. Before 2011, I would have made the same arguments that the people I am arguing against here are making. Trying to understand in 2011, why government was trying to remove subsidy for the nth time...in nearly 2 decades, was what started a process that led to me understanding some things....

But the truth is, most Nigerians are poor. We really cannot pay for power at a cost reflective tariff, most of us. The problem is, if we keep paying for power at cheap prices, because of 'poverty' we won't get good enough power, because the sector won't make the profit needed to attract investment and improve things.

Why most of them are shouting at me, is because they want me to think of the poor. They think I am being that insensitive to say that Nigerians should pay for power at market price. In a way I am. But if I agreed with them, then at the end, I am saying that the sector should remain underfunded. And we still get no light.

But then again, GSM companies did not think of the poor. They charged sky high prices back in the day, and people blasted them all day long. Until the benefits kicked in, and prices came down due to competition...and more investment led to expansion. Today we have a thriving telecoms sector because we simply let them set their prices. Nothing to do with politics, just simply set their prices.

And many poor people can now use telecom services. When it was pnly NITEL, with government set prices, very few Nigerians could use phones.

I get what you're saying, but at the end of the day Nigerians need to understand that magical thinking is not a substitute for rational economic policies that lay the groundwork for faster long-term growth. I'm doubtful any of the Nigerians who think they're advocating for the poor by supporting economy-distorting subsidies would be quick to cry "think of the poor patient!" if faced with a medical doctor who has to amputate a gangrenous limb or cut out a cancerous lung, but at the end of the day the mindset is the same.

An economist who criticizes petrol subsidies and price-controls on electricity is no more likely to be doing so out of "hatred" of the poor than the doctor who orders a grueling course of chemotherapy is doing so out of malice towards a patient. In both cases, the personal preference of the experts would be to go the other way (all else being equal), but in both cases, sentimentality is not allowed to cloud the harsh realities about what is best for the patient, whether that be the Nigerian economy as a whole or patients with seemingly innocuous symptoms which considered altogether ring fire alarms in the medical experts.

Far too many Nigerians are quick to resort to ad hominems and to impugn the motives of those who oppose growth-destroying policies supposedly aimed at "the poor", without even trying to understand where the critics of said "pro poor" policies might be coming from. In my case, the entire point of my choosing economics as a path of study is precisely because I've been obsessed with one question since I was a teenager, namely "Why is Nigeria, and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, so desparately poor, and why was the entire region proving incapable of emulating the East Asian countries which were already clearly escaping the same poverty trap 30 years ago?" If I hated or were even merely indifferent to the plight of Nigeria's poor, there were certainly more financially promising paths I could have followed, like going into law, or becoming a plastic surgeon in the USA ...

The frustrating thing is that after so many years of study, I finally reached a point where I could confidently answer the question that tormented me so much growing up, but now find that hardly anyone is interested in hearing the solutions, most of which are ultimately very simple. Not the politicians, who only care about winning elections and stealing to repay their backers, and definitely not the masses who subscribe to magical thinking and don't want to hear about making any kind of sacrifice for the future. Nigerians are especially guilty of this entitled mindset, thanks to that brief period between 1973 and 1981 when the country was flush with "Oil Crisis" Petrodollars, and both military and civilian leaders rained down "awuff" as if the good times would never end.

The funny thing about this thread is simple.

Because I believe power must be sold at a profit, mockery results.

Well, for over 30 years we have fixed the price of power, and it has done nothing well for us.

Time we tried something different.

But the communists here, they don;t want profits, they want to seize the means of production.

nairalanda1:
The funny thing about this thread is simple.

Because I believe power must be sold at a profit, mockery results.

Well, for over 30 years we have fixed the price of power, and it has done nothing well for us.

Time we tried something different.

But the communists here, they don;t want profits, they want to seize the means of production.

And just like the communists of Eastern Europe, they buy into the old slogan "We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us" - though in Nigeria's case it's the refineries and power companies pretending to work, while the Nigerian consumer is the one pretending to pay.

jmoore:
This is one crucial point you have failed to address. Nigerians have been buying transformers, poles, wires for the DISCOS but you keep talking about how Nigerians are not paying the right tariff for darkness supplied. Government is even paying electricity subsidy for the paltry 5,000 megawatts that can't power up to 30 million Nigerians at a time.

Rest with your propaganda!!

Oga, let's be honest, what that guy said is the truth.
Most of us do not pay, some or most prefer to 'tap current' illegally and we all pretend that everything is right.
I used to say, we as a people are a reflection of the people in power.
The TESCOS and DISCOS hold all the aces hence, we spend more to replace a disfunctional transformer or, wait for one politician with large pocket to bail us out.
It has been our way and we all keep pretending.

If we see truth, make we talk am! and let's stop calling it a propaganda because it is not!

Friend22:
Oga, let's be honest, what that guy said is the truth.
Most of us do not pay, some or most prefer to 'tap current' illegally and we all pretend that everything is right.
I used to say, we as a people are a reflection of the people in power.
That's the TESCOS and DISCOS hold all the aces hence , that's why we spend more to replace a defunct transformer or wait for one politician with large pockets to bail us out.
It has been our way and we all keep pretending.

If we say truth, make we talk am! and let's stop calling it a propaganda.

Are you among those doing illegal connection?
Do you even know the meaning of 'most'? All 3 houses of ours are paying bills, so where do you get the 'most'? This is how propaganda starts with exaggerated stats. There is no perfect system, even some people browse free with vpn but the telecoms are fixing their own equipment.