Every facebook generation of Nigerian internet users would have come across the phrase- light up Nigeria. It is a quest to see Nigeria and indeed Nigerians enjoy the necessities of power supply. It is a clamour for light from the Nigerian government by Nigerians. It formed part of the reasons young Nigerians trooped out for Enough is Enough protest. This is my quest too but I know it is an impossibility under these laws of darkness.

Let every succeeding government form ‘’a high powered’’ committee, let them spend hundreds of billions of naira as is the case now and then, yet the best they’d arrive at are fat pockets and fat thieves.
They could not provide telecom services, they failed woefully at providing portable water, they have failed and are still failing at providing education, they have failed at every business and will fail at any business.
Nigeria’s government should forget it! It has not capacity to meet the national demand for power. This is an economy without justice. Our current economy of power generation, supply and distribution is absolutely unjust. Those that use the most power refuse to pay for services rendered because they are connected to another power ( if you think I am talking about generators you are on your own). Those that get the Lilliputian share pay when they can and even that does not guarantee supply. Some others celebrate their apparent fortune if they have power for 5 hours in a 24 hour day, while some others just want to see their bulbs blink for a few seconds after months and indeed years of darkness. It has never been fair, it will never be fair, it cannot be fair- the business of government in the generation of power.

A line from the creed of an organization I belong says ‘’ economic justice can best be won by freemen through free enterprise.’’ Until power supply becomes what we can buy in a competitive market, we can only hope for light like King’s College, Lagos’ ‘’ Spero Lucem’’, but unlike KC’s continued fulfillment of that hope in the lives of eminent men of past, present and future years, that hope for light from the Nigerian government will remain a false one.
We had years when to travel by Nigeria Airways meant a quest for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Today, at MMA2, airline operators beg you to travel with them like conductors at a Lagos motor park. Plane tickets have become ‘’gbanjo’’, just pick your choice.
For years, NITEL helped to ensure that Nigerians see the use of a telephone as some form of luxury, now it has become a way of life even for a genuine Lagos beggar. Of course the telecoms’ market is not entirely free but its current state leaves our old NITEL as a relic of lost times.
Table water and pure water sachet have saved you from perpetually dry water corporation taps. Imagine, if we had as many companies supplying homes with clean and safe water as much as we have table water brands. We can!
Private universities can make you graduate donkey years before the public ones. I hear you say they are expensive. They will cease to be, when entrepreneurs are allowed to start their own schools without having to pay some bribes for their right to create value and earn money, or having to throw names and naira in Abuja where everything happens from.
Can you see that ours is not a free system but a shackled one? That is really is a story for another day.
Armed extortionists in black uniforms are on every useful and useless road but sadly the solution to that is not as that of dark homes and streets.
Can’t you see that the absence of light results from the presence of dark laws? The laws of darkness mean that government will decide when and how much of darkness you live with or how much of the inconvenience of generators to endure and the attendant maintenance on fuel and repairs. What would you rather have, pay an agreed sum to a power generating company of your choice for 24 hours power supply, or pay an implausible sum for more hours of darkness?

This is 2010, the tenth year in the twenty and first century. Freedom came into the world when men landed on earth. Freedom derives its essence from choice. Anytime you find yourself without freedom, you just might have lost your right to choices. Light up your mind and you’d find that to light up Nigeria, we must think not of NEPA or PHseeNada whatever they are called, we must think of the right laws. The law of free markets may sound like a polico-economic question but it has proven to be a question of life and death.