Recently, trends have been going on online about cheating. It seems the act is now way more popular these days, as even celebrities and social media influencers are being called out for cheating on their partners. This has brought debates on how much more rampant cheating has become in society. The most appalling part is, these offenders claim to really care and cherish their partners just before partaking in the offence. which brings us to the ‘cheating spree : government-consumer relationship.’
One relationship that seems to suffer its own share of the cheating toxicity flying around is the relationship between electricity consumers in Nigeria and the government. Over the years, the government has made promises of improvements in the Nigerian electricity industry, with claims of investments being pumped into the sector. However, despite these, the citizens of the country complain daily of deteriorating access to electricity.
In fact, it is popularly known that electricity supply was better in the olden days. One of the most recent failed promises made in this relationship was that privatising the sector would fix all the problems affecting it. In 2013 the sector was privatised, but here we are today, even with more problems than we had pre-privatisation. The issues have managed to span across all corners of the industry from inadequate transmission abilities, to not enough distribution infrastructure, to even generation bottlenecks; and in addition to all these, tariffs are being increased regularly and electricity consumers cannot keep.
In this game of cheating, however, the government doesn’t fail to bring more ways of surprising its citizens. Today, there are communities that have been without electricity for years to months despite government claims of investing money, even borrowing money, to ensure that its people get electricity.
One of the newest promises however, is the Siemens deal that the government has assured will do wonders for the Nigerian electricity industry. The contract involves a total ramp up of the transmission capacity of the grid in three phases. This deal envisages to boost energy access in the country like never before. Now, let us see if it will actually be fulfilled or if it is just another cheating scheme by the government on its electricity consumers.