Bez - More You
Bez - More You from Kemi Adetiba on Vimeo.
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The emperor has no clothes
17 hours ago
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Their Field of Play
Kole Omotoso's Just Before Dawn gets off to a bad start, with what appears to be a broken link between missing sections of the book in the early chapters. It is also (the Spectrum edition I have) a low quality book: the cover design is dreadful and the paper is so thin you can see the ink on the reverse of each page. Still, once you get going, it is an absolutely magnificent read, bringing to vivid life the complexities of colonial and post-Independence Nigeria. He does this by fictionalising real events with a deft ear for dialogue and then providing bridging narrative sections. This passage, from the chapter Their Field of Play, is typical:
'By the first decade of the 20th century, the meaning of time had changed for the Africans on the coastal areas of Nigeria. The current of investment ebbs and flows, loss and profit overtook their previous rhythm of planting and harvesting. Numerous gods were banished and one god was once again proclaimed, like the Arab traders before them. New natives were created by the white men in their own image. And indeed, wherever the white man's money could be earned, the Africans went. A little training in the mission school, a smattering of communication English and a comprehension of the mysteries of credit and debit and the 'beach clerk' could follow the white man anywhere. The new times went into the interior, the forest area, and the Africans here also imbibed their ways, condemned their own and abandoned their huts and their ancestors. The new props of their lives were the English language they spoke badly, the new dresses they wore in imitation of the white man and the white man's thinking that only bigger and fatter and faster was better for their lives. But from the fringe of the desert other times predominated. Times past, present and future had already been revealed... tomorrow has nothing to teach yesterday, and today can only be lived if it is lived in the shadow of all yesterdays. Here, there was bustle to ruffle the surface of a somnolent existence. From the coast into the interior came "time is money" and it encountered from the edges of the desert "time, revealed beyond the efforts of man."'
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Ikom monolith, Calabar Museum, December 2006
This stone is now in the grounds of the Calabar museum, but was originally sited at Ikom to the north. The Ikom Monoliths are each at least 2,000 years old if not much older. They are Nigeria's Stonehenge and show evidence of a writing tradition in West Africa from the time of Socrates and Aristotle. Read more...
Calabar, December 2006
Just dug up these pictures from nearly four years ago during a trip to Calabar. I had posted some of them at the time, but its nice to look at them again.
Read more...The Telephone Conversation
It seems that since it was written, almost every Nigerian child has been made to study Soyinka's 1959 poem, the Telephone Conversation, and remembers the experience fondly. Non-Nigerians may not quite realise how important this poem is in Nigerian consciousness. The YouTube clip is slightly artless, but at least it introduces the poem to the poem-averse. Better to read the real thing though:
Telephone Conversationby Wole Soyinka
The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey—I am African."
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.
"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.
"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. "West African sepia"--and as afterthought,
"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding
"DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."
"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?" "Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused--
Foolishly, madam--by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black--One moment, madam!"--sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears--"Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather
See for yourself?"
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Ebedi Writers Residency (forwarded email)
The official opening ceremony of the first Writers Residency in Nigeria, The Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, Oyo State of Nigeria has been fixed for Wednesday September 1 2010 at the premises of the Resort at the Barracks area in Iseyin.
To declare the Resort open is his Royal Highness, Kabiyesi Dr Abdul Ganiyu Adekunle Salau, the Aseyin of Iseyin who is also an experienced Veterinary Surgeon who has contributed a lot to the human and cultural development of his domain.
The Chairman of the occasion is the erudite playwright, author and former National President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Prof Femi Osofisan who would be supported by other veteran writers,members of the Board of Governors, community leaders among others.
Highlights of the opening ceremony are, welcome speeches,presentations by the current residents, as well as students from the Iseyin community who have been tutored by the residents during the course of their four out of the six weeks stay. Also on the programme are poetry renditions, cultural displays and an interactive session between the residents and journalists.
The Ebedi International Residency is an initiative to provide writers with a serene and condusive environment with which to complete their on going literary efforts. It is open to writers from all over the world who have working manuscripts in any literary genre.
Selection for residents is through applications and based on an assessment of applicants CV as well as the literary work at hand by members of the Board of Governors. Selected writers who are expected to spend between 4 to 6 weeks in residence are provided with free accommodation, writing and recreational facilities as well as a decent allowance for the duration of their stay.
In turn, residents are expected to spend at least two hours a week with selected secondary school students in the town to whom they will impart some of their literary experience.
The next session of the residency is expected to commence in October 2010. Interested writers can send their applications to the secretary, Alkasim Abdulkadir at [email protected] or visit the website www.ebediwritersresort.com for more details.
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Why is Africa poor?
Excellent article by Greg Mills here. I think he touches on the key issue but doesn't develop it sufficiently - a weak sense of national identity in many African countries is at the bottom of the issue. The provenance of this weak identity comes directly from late colonial period divide and rule policies.
The danger is that he comes close to lapsing into the simplistic blame the leaders perspective of Achebe's The Trouble with Nigeria. African leaders are a reflection of the society at large - they are not parachuted in from Mars.
In many respects, the difference between Ghana (rapidly losing its 3rd world status) and Nigeria (rapidly retrenching it, with cholera spreading through the land as the most recent indicator of decay) is the difference between a country with a relatively strong sense of national identity (many if not most Ghanaians think of themselves as Ghanaian first, and by ethnicity/tribe second), and that with a relatively weak sense (most Nigerians define themselves by ethnicity/tribe first, and as Nigerian second). This is the difference that Confucianism makes in East Asia.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Sir Richard Burton in West Africa
Many thanks to a recent anonymous commentor for the links to the two volumes (pdf downloads) of Richard Burton's Wanderings in West Africa (published under the pseudonymous initials A FRGS in 1863), which apparently includes reference to "Nigeria" several decades before Flora Shaw came up with the name. However, I am yet to find the word "Nigeria" in the two volumes, although in a footnote on page 256 of Volume II Burton does refer to "Nigerian" - but apropos of regions close to the river Niger, not in terms of a name yet applied to a country. The attribution to Shaw may therefore still stand.
(As an aside, I didn't realise the Niger used to be called the Kwara, and that Mungo Park preferred the name "Joliba" - wherever that came from).
In Volume I, I notice he refers to both the Yoruba and the "Nufe" (Nupe) on page 177. I'm still in search of when the term "Yoruba" originally appears (originally a term the Fulani gave to the citizens of the city of Oyo - now nothing more than the fragments of ruins deep inside the Old Oyo National Park). Lower down, he writes,
"The ignoble race, or pure breed, the aboriginal and typical African, exceptionally degraded in Guinea, and improving as he descends southwards and blends with the true Kaffirs, who may be a people of mixed blood. In his lowest organisation he is prognathous, and dolicho-kephalic, with retreating forehead, more scalp than face; calfless, cucumber skinned, lark-heeled, with large broad and flat feet; his smell is rank, his hair crisp and curly, and his pile is like peppercorns. His intellect weak, morale deficient, amiability strong, temperament enduring, destructiveness highly developed, and sensibility to pain comparatively blunt."
In Volume II, "A Day in Lagos" begins on page 186. He describes the city on page 212 thus:
"The site of the town, four miles from the entrance, is detestable; unfortunately, there is no better within many a league... The first aspect of it is as if a hole had been hollowed out in the original mangrove forest that skirts the waters, where bush and dense jungle mingle, garnished with many a spreading tree, tall palms, and matted mass of fetid verdure rise in terrible profusion around..."
More description comes on page 222, including this magnificent put-down,
"Everything has the squalid, unclean look of an idle people, and what could be expected from men to whom Pomona has been so indecently kind, whose bread and butter, whose wine and oil, grow for them in the trees around?"
Before you reach for wikipedia, Pomona was the Roman Goddess of plenty.
He ends the chapter on Lagos thus,
"And finally, the natives should be taught, or rather forced, to learn something like purity in their habits."
Heinrich Boll essays/short stories/photo competion
(20 September deadline)
Call for Essays/Short Stories and Photographs
For a Publication on:
UNITY IN DIVERSITY: DIVERSITY IS POSITIVE FOR NIGERIA
The Heinrich Böll Stiftung is a German political foundation, affiliated to the Green Party Germany. The Foundation is engaged in civic education worldwide with 28 offices. The Foundation was named after the writer Heinrich Böll (1917-1985) who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novels and short stories in 1972. His courageous and unerring intervention significantly enriched and influenced political culture in Germany. He personifies the values the Foundation now stands for: the defense of freedom, civic courage, tolerance, open debate and the valuation of art and culture as independent spheres of thought and action.
The Conflict Management Program of the Foundation’s Nigeria office emerged as a response to threats at Nigeria’s democratic processes (see www.boellnigeria.org). As part of the Foundation’s contribution towards addressing the recurrent and protracted conflicts in Nigeria rooted in diversity issues, the proposed publication should underline the positive role the rich diversity of the country can play and explore ways of transforming the current negative social cohesion into a common strive for development.
This call for essays/short stories and photographs on the theme: “Unity in Diversity: Diversity is positive for Nigeria” intends to:
- Encourage Nigerians to be part of a solution to the recurrent diversity related violent conflicts in the country.
- Explore new ideas/strategies to solve the incessant violent conflicts.
- Provide a platform for citizenship participation in the quest for sustainable peace in Nigeria.
The essays/short stories should concentrate on:
- Telling a true-life story of how the diversity of Nigeria’s people enriched your personal, your families or your friends’ life and explore how the positive aspect of diversity could benefit Nigeria’s social and economic development
- Drawing conclusions from your own positive experiences to develop new ideas/strategies for integrating the positive role of diversity into the social and political structures
- The role of future generations of Nigerians to ensure peace is sustained in the country
The photographs should
- Concentrate on the theme “Diversity is Positive for Nigeria” and include a brief description of how the photograph depicts the theme
Send entries to: [email protected]
Word Count: Not more than 3000words. Quotes and references must be clearly marked as such and properly cited at the end of the text
Format: Texts are accepted in the following formats: word or pdf, they must be in English language
Age Limit: No Age Limit
Deadline for submission: Extended to 20th September 2010
Notification: Selected entries will be notified in October 2010
Further Information: Heinrich Böll Stiftung
16a, Oladipo Diya Street
2nd Avenue Extension
www.boellnigeria.org
A jury of Nigerian writers, conflict experts and photographers will select the best entries which will be posted onto the Foundation’s website and published as a book. There will be an official presentation ceremony (date to be communicated) followed by a short expert roundtable discussion. Note: We reserve the right to modify the format and content of the submissions for publication purposes.
Rewards:
- A 5-day trip to Berlin / Germany to participate in an arts festival and educational event organized by the Foundations head-office for the overall best entry!
- The selected essays/short stories will be rewarded with N 25 per word up to a maximum of 3000 words.
- The selected photographs will be rewarded with N 30,000each
Quotes on “diversity” by Nigerians:
Ola Joseph, Nigerian author: “Diversity is not about how we differ. It is about embracing one another’s uniqueness”.
Toni Kan, award winning writer: “I drew inspiration, anecdotes and ideas from the diverse nature of my country, Nigeria. My thesis was that by focusing so much on what divides us, we fail to see the ties that bind. The world we live is no longer delineated by clear cut boundaries. We have become a true global village and it is more evident in Nigeria where travel, the imperatives of work and survival as well as inter-tribal marriages has blurred the lines of division.”
Prof. Albert Oluwole Isaac, internationally renowned conflict expert from the University of Ibadan defines diversity as “human differences in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, ideology or social class. It calls attention to the fact that human beings are not born the same and even when they are, some environmental factors make them to have diverse social, economic and political orientations. However, diversity is like a budding flower with many beautiful petals that complement each other in adding beauty to the environment. It is therefore an asset to any nation. For example, diversity makes it possible for Nigeria to be one of the most culturally significant nations in the world. This could be seen in the variety of languages, food, dresses, songs, festivals and cultural sites in the country”.
Ade Bantu, Musician: “As a Nigerian-German, I consciously embrace the best of the world and my continent. Diversity is my reality, yes, it is challenging and demanding, at times, but I have learned that as long as I am open, curious and willing to go extra miles, there is so much of ‘me’ to be discovered in the alleged ‘others’.”
Roselyn Onyegbula, HBS Program Manager, Conflict Management: “Diversity is like a human being, each with a distinct finger print but with other common features that make us all human. Nigeria is a very diverse nation, to draw strength from our diversity we need to focus on our commonalities and not differences, to move the country forward.”
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On the Petroleum Industry Bill
Excellent resource page here. It includes an early and the latest version of the bill.
Read more...CNN piece on children accused of being witches in Nigeria
Eno's Story, a redemptive tale of a young child accused of being a witch, will shortly be released by Cassava Republic.
External and internal bandwidth
With the array of submarine cables commissioned/in planning into Nigeria/West Africa, the focus shifts to the lack of internal bandwidth capacity. I'm told that NITEL still has the most extensive network. However, there is no market incentive for this network to be utilised, maintained and developed as it should. See here.
Read more...Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Dreaming of Farin Ruwa
Farin Ruwa in Nasarawa State is one of the highest waterfalls on the continent, with a drop of more than 150 metres (Victoria Falls' drop is a mere 108 metres). And yet, according to this article, there has been just over 1,000 visitors since 1999. The people I know who have been there all say its a stunning experience. The falls are only three hours drive from Abuja. Plans to develop tourism to the site and also for a hydro-electric power project have yet to be implemented. A trip during this damina season is in order methinks.
Strangely enough, Farin Ruwa is not even listed on the World Waterfall Database.
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This image was taken from here.
NLNG Hall of Fame
There are some knowns and some unknowns on the list. I wonder what being in the Hall of Fame actually consists of. Is NLNG going to build a museum somewhere with exhibits on those selected - or is it just the usual "Gala night" affair?
I'm happy that both Fela and Ladi Kwali are included. Ladi Kwali is revered more outside of Nigeria than in. I guess you could say the same about Fela too. However, with this first step towards legitimation, I wonder if a statue of Fela in Ikeja may become more feasible now. It would become a tourist attraction pretty quickly..
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Monday, August 23, 2010
The demise of Lord Harcourt
Scroll down to the 6th paragraph to find out what happened to the man Port Harcourt is named after. Thanks JB for the link.
The Wikipedia entry for him also provides further evidence:
'Harcourt was known as a sexual predator attracted to both sexes. He tried to rape Dorothy Brett, the daughter of Lord Esher, and followed this by an attempt to seduce his son. Dorothy Brett wrote of him that "it is so tiresome that Loulou is such an old roué. He is as bad with boys as with girls .. he is simply a sex maniac. It isn't that he is in love. It is just ungovernable Sex desire for both sexes". His behaviour was known and tolerated in private, but when he attempted to seduce one 12-year-old boy (Edward James, who grew up to become a great collector of surrealist and other contemporary art), the boy's mother began to tell the whole of society. Harcourt could not tolerate the impending disgrace and he committed suicide at his London home in Brook Street.'
How PH got its name is almost as casual a story as how Nigeria got its name (from Flora Shaw):
'In August 1913, the Governor–General of Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard wrote to Harcourt, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, "in the absence of any convenient local name, I would respectfully ask your permission to call this Port Harcourt." To this the Secretary of State replied, "It gives me pleasure to accede to your suggestion that my name should be associated with the new Port."'
Addendum (26th August). More on Loulou Harcourt's activities here (scroll down to the paragraph that begins "Historians generally doubt.."
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Thursday, August 19, 2010
Ginger Baker in Africa
Finally watched Ginger Baker in Africa this evening. When Damon Albarn was a dribbling toddler, Baker drove from the UK to Lagos to hang out with Fela and set up a recording studio.
Apart from some inspiring footage of Fela in concert in the heavy rain in Calabar, you get a glimpse of Nigeria pre-resource curse. Lagos Island looks scrubbed clean. Marina by boat before that awful flyover, with trees and sheeny modernism above.
It makes me dream of an alternative history for Nigeria from 1971 to the present day: instead of the descent into military dictatorship, a flourshing and an opening as Nigeria became the superpower of Africa. It didn't happen (but it might make a good novel idea), and Ginger Baker in Africa is a capsule lost in time. Fela is dead. Long live Fela.
Good Borgu photos here
Lovely photos of Borgu in 2005 from UK-based Bukkie 73 Photography. Click on Enter then on Exhibitions bottom right to see the pictures.
Read more...Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Advert for the proposed new state for the Nupe people
"Edu" means river in the Nupe language.
Read more...On thinking the African Event...
An interesting proposition by Ainehi Edoro on a possible line of flight from the continuity/discontinuity and authenticity/inauthenticity poles in rethinking African history/futures/contemporainety. Here.
Read more...The Concept of First Lady and Politics in Nigeria
The "First Lady" institution in Nigeria as a form of gender-mainstreaming? This author thinks not?
Read more...Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Memo from Lord Harcourt to Lord Lugard, Zungeru Cemetery
Lord Lewis Viscount Harcourt was the British Secretary of State for the Colonies (and therefore head of the Colonial Office). He is the origin of "Port Harcourt". I once saw a doctor in London who was his grand nephew. Someone else once told me Lord Harcourt was a paedophile, but who knows?
Read more...Nnamdi Azikiwe's birthplace, Zungeru
There was a visitor's centre planned at the site of Zik's birthplace, but the project was abandoned over a decade ago. What is left is a modern ruin. Zik's grave in Onitsha has suffered the same fate - an abandoned white elephant project and another modern ruin. Is this how we should remember past heroes?
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Zungeru Cemetery
Zungeru. The so-called forgotten capital of Northern Nigeria. Zungeru was the capital of the Northern Protectorate from 1902 to 1916. The 'pacification' effort cost British lives as well as countless lives of locals. Zungeru was Lord Lugard's operational base until the capital of the North was shifted to the new town of Kaduna just before the end of the First World War. The Lugard cemetery lies on a hill just outside the town. Its a beautiful place to be buried, even if the dead lie thousands of miles from home.
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The Kaduna River
Sand collectors ride out in their canoes to collect sand from the riverbed. This involves diving underwater with a bucket...
Read more...Rice paddy fields, Niger State
I kept thinking I was in Thailand or China. In fact, the rice seed they use - Weta - has been introduced from India.
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Workers in the paddy fields near Wushishi
They earn 500 naira for a full day of back breaking work threshing rice stalks.
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Thursday, August 05, 2010
New Windows of opportunities
The website for the official Nigeria @ 50 celebration book, "New Windows of opportunities", published by Fidelis Anosike, here.
The book project (20,000 copies plus 5,000 CDs) is costing the Federal Government N250m.
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Wednesday, August 04, 2010
On the Igbotic....
A gracious review of The Thing Around Your Neck on this excellent Ghanaian literary blog. Kinna comments,
"Although I appreciate the universality of her themes, I find Adichie’s insistence on situating every story she writes in the Igbo community unsettling. For an African like me, who looks to a unified view of the continent, who sees Africa as greater than the sum of its individual groups, I had hoped that Adichie works would reflect the diversity that is Nigeria."
This opens up an interesting and contentious topic. On the one hand, one might say that the best writers write about what they know - in this case observations of middle-class campus life in the South-East of Nigeria, and more recently, elements of diasporic experience in the US. On the other hand, the writer's mettle can perhaps only be truly tested when they venture well beyond their spatio-temporal comfort zones. One might then wonder why the kaleidoscopic everythingelseness of Nigeria is bracketed out in favour of what is sometimes referred to as 'the Igbotic': the obsession with a particular culture, a specific narrative and what amounts to a single story.
I sometimes dream of a book which demonstrates the colonial/post-colonial artifice of ethnicity and 'tribe' on the continent. In Nigeria's case, a tome exposing the myth of indigeneity is sorely needed, but that's another topic. In terms of story, both within Nigeria, the sub-region and across the continent, building up strands of connectedness and interconnection has to be the way forward, as Africa increasingly learns to talk and listen to itself.
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Light Up Nigeria: facts and stats about electricity in Nigeria
The Light Up Nigeria Twitter feed published a series of compelling tweets this morning. I've pasted them all below, more or less in the order they appeared. Read and absorb the complexity of the mess:
· 1881: year Electricity was first generated in England. 15 yrs before Nigeria
· 1896 The year electricity was first generated in Nigeria. Place was Ijora, in Lagos.
· 60KW - Nigeria's generation capacity in 1896. :)
· Kainji Dam: The oldest, still functional power plant in Nigeria, is about 40 years old.
· 48% - percentage of Nigerians who have NO source of power, 114 years after we first generated power in Nigeria....
· 40%: percentage of the population served by the National grid
· 60%: The average percentage of time when the 40% served by the grid don't have power.
· Kainji Dam: What it was designed produce 760MW, What it is producing now: 400MW. Why? Faulty parts
· 3: Number of Hydro Plants in Nigeria. 1939: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 1000: What they generate
· 11: Number of Thermal Plants in NG. 5976: Amount of power in MW, they are supposed to generate. 2589: What they generate
· There are 16 ongoing power generation projects designed to generate 12,500MW for the national grid
· If the projects were completed today, Nigeria would have 20,000MW capacity in generation. BUT....
· BUT... The National transmission grid is only designed to carry 4,800MW. So 75% of that capacity will useless...
· But it also gets WORSE. Some of the electricity generated is "lost" in transmission. (Transmission Loss)
· Transmission losses usually should not exceed 7%. This means that if 100MW is generated, at least 93MW should get to u!
· The Transmission losses on the Nigerian grid is 35%!!!!! So if 100MW is generated only 65MW gets to you!!
· Please find a diagram of the NG transmission system attached. Notice the TX losses?? http://yfrog.com/114n5g
· Transmission losses in Nigeria are the highest in the world. more than 3 times what is normal.
· Even if we generate 2000GW, our grid will only be able to carry 4800 MW and 1,600MW of that will be WASTED
· So why does the Nigerian transmission grid have such a high loss?? Sabotage! Illegal Connections, Poor Equipment
· There were 12 cases of sabotage of the transmission grid in Nigeria in 2008 alone. (TCN)
· N1m. The amount in Naira paid to Ajibode Community as reward 4 assistance in apprehension of two powerline vandals in 08.
· 30 years: The average age of the equipment on the National grid. Older than most of you!!
· To illustrate the capacity issues on the National grid consider the following example:
· River State spends $161m to generate 275MW. Capacity of Grid into Rivers 100MW. 175MW: what RSG paid 4 they don't get
· Rivers State is only getting 40% benefit of their own investment because of grid limitations. :)
· Over 90 transmission projects are ongoing, to add an additional 9,000MW to the capacity of the grid
· Even if all 90 transmission projects are completed, There will still be a shortfall of 10,000MW in capacity. God dey.
· But even if we complete all these projects... the biggest question is HOW WILL THEY BE MAINTAINED?
· For more information on the status of power generation projects: http://bit.ly/cs056D Jan 2010, but still current.
· EFCC survey (published 2010), PHCN ranked least performing & least honest, less than political parties or the police!
· According to the same survey, 82% of the businesses surveyed admit they have bribed PHCN for "better treatment"
· If we are bribing PHCN, will they not be corrupt?
· N7/KWh - How much we buy power in Nigeria. N18/KWh - About how much it costs to generate
· N11/KWh - About how much of your electricity bill Govt. pays for you (subsidy). *shrug*
· How much of our PHCN bills do we really pay? Lets do a small check. :)
· 950m - how much in naira Consumers in the Diobu Business Unit in PH Rivers State alone owed PHCN as at March 2010
· 98bn - Amount in naira owed to PHCN by FGN MDA as at April 2009.
· 70bn - Amount owed in debt to PHCN due to unsettled bills as march 2010 - Minister of State for power.
· So if the customers and the govt. are owing PHCN, how do the staff get paid?
· If you are not getting paid or paid well, are you more likely to collect bribes from saboteurs?
· Now lets talk about gas. Gas is the source of fuel for 40% of all power generated in Nigeria.
· Nigeria produces 4.2bcfd of gas every year. 55% of that is flared (burnt up)
· The amount of gas flared in Nigeria creates about 70 million metric tons of CO2 emissions per year. BIG pollution
· Imagine stacking up $2.5bn in $100 notes and burning them up in a huge inferno? That’s what we do when we flare gas!
· The amount of gas we flare can provide electricity for ALL OF Sub-Saharan Africa
· But that is not all. The amount of gas we flare is equivalent to $2.5 BILLION every year!!
· The state of Florida has 55,460MW generating capacity. About 10 times that of Nigeria
· Texas can generate 104,966MW of electricity - beat that with a stick. :D
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