Last Monday, around 8am, he mounted his chair on a table with a public address system at Yaba bus stop, about three hundred meters to the Federal Neuro Psychiatric Hospital Yaba, shouting on top of his voice. “We must put an end to this madness of PHCN in Nigeria.
They are fraudsters. They keep collecting money from us without giving us electricity. We must stop it now!” His choice of location may have led many think he was an unruly inmate of the psychiatric hospital.
But Dawodu is indeed hale and hearty, in body and mind. He is only one of millions of Nigerians who daily have to live with the unjustice of paying PHCN for services not rendered.
He is one of those who feel, rightly, that there may be no light for Nigeria at the end of the long tunnel unless the electricity issue is firmly addressed. Sixty-year-old Dawodu says, “The first time I embarked on this sort of thing was about ten years ago when our transformer got burnt in Itire area, under Mushin Local Government. Our transformer was down for about six months and we had no light all through the six months.
Surprisingly, PHCN kept bringing bills for us to pay without repairing our transformer. I felt very bad and I organised a peaceful demonstration which to the PHCN office in Five star area of Mushin. “That yielded result at that time. However, after sometime, the situation grew worse. And it has continued to grow worse.”
In a voice that thundered with anger, Dawodu asked, “Why has EFCC failed to visit any official of PHCN past or present, with the reported colossal money that grew wings in the development of the power sector?
Agreed that such monies can never be traced or recovered as it is tradition in Nigeria, I make bold to demand that it should be traded for the permanent abolition of estimated billing and reparation of huge sums collected for services not rendered. They bring you crazy bills at the end of the month and the power is never there for people to use. After all, for every scientific device, there is always measurement.
Therefore, the analog meters must be read and the prepaid meters supplied to customers. There is no reason why people will be paying for what they did not consume. It is very unfair and that is the reason I am embarking on hunger strike indefinitely until something is done by the government to put an end to this mess.”
Dawodu is determined to sit at Yaba bus stop come rain, come shine, no matter what odds may be stacked against his one-man protest, until something is done. Even though that may actually amount to waiting for the legendary Godot, Dawodu is undeterred.
He has high hopes for his intervention. Indeed, he warns the powers-that-be: “Don’t let Yaba bus stop turn into Tahir Square (the venue of Egypt’s revolution) and don’t let my hunger strike be Nigeria’s awakening.” Dawodu has a three point agenda for his protest and hunger strike.
“The three things I am advocating are total abolition of crazy billing, reparation of the unjust money PHCN have collected over the years and release of prepaid meters to consumers so that we will only pay for power consumed.
Until these things are done, we will not get anywhere. That is why all these companies, bigtime employers of labour, are fleeing Nigeria to other countries where power is stable. It is just too unfair to the common man,” he said. Dawodu further disclosed that what enraged him the most is the statement made by the Minister for Power in an interview in one of the national dailies last month.
“I am seriously holding to the statement of Chinedu Nebo, the Minister for Power, who in an interview disclosed that we are facing very difficult times in the power sector. He said, ‘It will interest you to know that some of the problems are manmade, such as poor maintenance habit, vandalism, sabotage and poor funding.’
Those were his exact words. So Nigerians are now the scapegoats that will be paying for problems that could have been avoided in the first place? It is so annoying.” Hakeem Adewale Abdul, a resident of Ogba area of Lagos State totally identifies with Dawodu’s protest.
He says “Right now, PHCN officials are worse than policemen. The only language they understand is money and when you pay, you don’t get services for the money you pay. Imagine this, I have been using my prepaid meter for about six months now and the funny thing is that as I speak with you, they still keep bring bills for the post paid meter I have stopped using for over six months.
They were the same people who brought the prepaid meter to my place, so it is not as if they are not aware that I now use a pre-paid meter. Why are they still bringing me these crazy bills?”
Dawodu is still at Yaba bus stop, shouting himself hoarse, pleading mercy for Abdul and the teeming masses of Nigeria from those they elected to run their affairs. Is anyone listening to him?
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