National Grid And Epilepsy, By Bright Okuta

It is a scene too familiar, yet always unnerving: a plunge into darkness; a people left stranded in the blackened corridors of a nation struggling to keep its lights on. It happens always. The Nigerian national grid has failed once again; a system afflicted with an illness so profound that it might as well be diagnosed with epilepsy, convulsing and collapsing as unpredictably as a seizure in full spasm.

The National Grid behaves much like an epileptic patient in the throes of chronic illness. It is a structure that is both unpredictable and tragic, with its episodes as sudden as they are uncontrollable. The flicker of lights is like the first twitch of an eyelid, a sign that the system’s internal circuits are on the verge of shorting, like neurons firing erratically in the brain of a patient. The grid hums sputters, and then plunges, leaving cities, towns, villages, hospitals, and homes all over Nigeria in the thick fog of darkness.

I always marvel at the grid’s dexterity in the art of collapse. Its fall is usually dramatic, almost theatrical that takes place repeatedly, at the most inconvenient hours, yet utterly chaotic. It is as if the grid, much like an epileptic fit, has developed a kind of cruel humor, a timing so peculiar that it always seems to know when it would most inconvenience Nigerians.

A few weeks ago, it scored a hat trick, a series of frequent collapses that I almost suspected was having a football match. In football, a hat trick is a coveted feat when a player scores three goals in a single game, earning applause and accolades for such mastery. Similarly, the grid scored a hat trick by collapsing three times in one week. A tragic performance, but an ironic “achievement”

But if the Nigerian grid’s epilepsy were confined to the wires and switches of electrical substations, it might be tolerable. The true horror lies in its reach, in how this system’s spasmodic fits infect every part of the life of an average Nigerian. The grid is the nervous system of a nation, linking the hopes and ambitions of a people who live in perpetual expectation of its next fall. It is a metaphor for governance itself; the shuddering, uncontrollable nature of a state forever at odds with its aspirations.

We grow accustomed to the seizures, adjusting our routines to the grid’s convulsions, as if living in a nation with stable electricity were a dream too lofty to imagine. We adapt, just as one would adjust to a life where one’s very survival depends on unpredictable shocks and stutters. We become survivors, ever watchful for the next seizure, waiting in the darkened rooms of a nation that itself is a patient, struggling for breath, gasping for light like the patients in general hospitals affected by the grid seizures.

For what future can there be for a people who must live by the fickle pulse of an epileptic grid? How long can we survive, straddling the boundaries of light and darkness, life and death.

The Nigerian grid, like an untreated case of epilepsy, is a silent killer. It seizes without warning, collapses without apology, and leaves in its wake a darkness so profound that even hope seems to wither. It is the soul of a nation that flickers, fades, and falls; a grid that has become the embodiment of its own epileptic state, and a people left to live, adapt, and die within the shadows of its relentless seizures.

There are solutions, fragments of hope as faintly as our elusive electricity. But like every good ghost story, they appear and disappear as swiftly as the lights themselves. First, fire someone. The minister of power, our banker-turned-power-overseer, somehow rode the last cabinet shake-up as smoothly as a practiced surfer skimming over waves. He seems to have a knowledge of power generation as an elephant might have about flying.

Billions have been poured into this behemoth of a grid, year after year. But those funds are invisible. We just have to seat waiting for the next collapse. For the next blackout.

The rains have ended; harmattan is here with its dry winds and brittle air. What happens then? If the grid couldn’t hold under the blessing of flowing water, what sort of disaster awaits when the dry season clamps down with its ashen grip?

In the meantime, we shall stock up on candles; not for birthdays but for the grid’s funeral. And as we murmur our prayers to the grid’s memory, we may yet wonder: could we, perhaps, see better in the dark?

Who should we ask?

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