From the years of centralized military control to the privatization experiments under President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, electricity has remained Nigeria’s most stubborn paradox. Policies have changed, ownership has shifted, and institutions have been renamed, yet the nation still gropes daily for light. The assassination of figures such as Chief Bola Ige—who once bore responsibility in the power sector—stands as a grim reminder of how fraught and contested electricity reform has been, entangled with politics, vested interests, and dangerous opacity.
This national condition echoes the atmosphere of Night, the classic poem by Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka written in the 1980s. In that poem, night is not passive; it is a force that presses upon the human spirit, breeds unease, and gives birth to unseen powers. The poet’s darkness is heavy, fertile, and menacing. Nigeria’s darkness functions in much the same way—an environment that does not merely withhold light but actively shapes behavior, ethics, and destiny.
Today, electricity is rationed into bands—A, B, C, D, and E—an alphabet of inequality that reflects both scarcity and frustration. In urban centers, many middle-class Nigerians openly contemplate how to bypass meters, manipulate bills, or enjoy power without payment. This moral compromise is not born purely of greed but of exhaustion: erratic supply that bears no resemblance to the charges demanded. In rural communities, communal billing often becomes inflated and opaque, deepening distrust between citizens and distributors. Thus, darkness corrupts not only infrastructure but civic virtue.
