Nigeria, Reimagine Electricity Provision By Giving Communities The Power To Solve Their Problems: Idume Community As A Testcase
The Oasis Reporters
December 6, 2024
It flows from upstream and empties into River Niger through Isselegu, Ashaka, Azagba, Ibedeni to Ase, where it empties into the River Niger at Asaba – Ase.
Along it’s course all the way from Ethiope River. The River Nun flows into it.
Photo credit : Aseland
A paper by Mercè Labordena, Research Associate at ETH Zürich Department of Environmental Systems Science, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich says:
“Electricity lifts people out of poverty and improves their health and standards of living. Yet 1.3 billion of the world’s people don’t have access to it. And more than half of them are in sub-Saharan Africa”.
For almost a century, Nigeria has struggled to provide electricity to its ever growing population but has been bogged down by inadequate generation capacity. Even when it is said to be growing very slowly, nobody is impressed. It also battles with transmission and distribution bottlenecks.
Then throw corruption, waste and inefficiency into the mix.
The realization becomes very stark that the government cannot do it on its own. There’s no political will or capacity.
Therefore, enacting the 2023 Electricity Act has paved the way for subnational governments to invest in the electricity value chain according to Bayo Adelabu, Nigeria’s power minister.
Take a hypothetical case of Ase Idume Community in Delta State for instance that has a critical mass of highly educated men and women. The riverine community had never had electricity in its history until Governors James Ibori and Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan happened to it. Uduaghan’s government ensured that the electricity poles that originated from Ughelli in Ughelli South local government got to Isoko land, then Ndokwa East.
A very long transmission line.
Ever since Uduaghan left office in 2015, Idume Community can go without electricity for one year at a stretch without a minute’s blink.
The citizens have brainstormed endlessly on the vexatious issue and they have often contributed money running into millions of naira to solve the intractable problem.
They may fix it. But within days, some scoundrels along the corruption chain would do one dastardly thing or the other and darkness would take it’s place. Millions of naira, spent for nothing else except massaging corruption.
The question is, how can the problem be solved?
A possible way is this: Let the Community be empowered to construct their own dam along their river on any of the tributaries along it. That is River Ase.
Photo credit: Damian Mike
Install turbines in the water and generate their own electric power. It can be 10 or 10MWs. The distribution bottlenecks all the way from Ughelli would be solved. Instead of spending millions every year for scoundrels to sabotage.
This is doable.
Having constant electricity in Idume will unlock several economic potentials in the entire area. Excess electric power can be fed back into the distribution grid. With a few other Niger Delta communities doing this, the neglected communities would get a new lease of life.
The government cannot do it. After all, Uzere community in Isoko South ( just a few kilometers from Ase). Uzere has been flaring gas at the Shell Flow station between it and Idume since 1958. There has never been a plan to convert the wasting gas into gas turbines to give the area electricity.
Let the people go the water way. While the government continues to allow the flaring of their gas.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
