Nigeria’s Bayelsa State in years of darkness

If a single explanation can be offered for the intractable crises of the Niger Delta, it can be found in the vexatious fact that 50 years after crude oil was struck in commercial quantity in Oloibiri (Bayelsa State), by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), neither the Oloibiri community, nor any other community in Bayelsa State is connected to the national electrical grid. In fact Bayelsa is the only state in Nigeria that is yet to get connected to the national grid.
Yet, while the SPDC is celebrating its golden jubilee of oil exploration in Nigeria, the very birth place of the nation's fortune is not only in ruins, but has been reduced to something of an environmental chaff. Elsewhere, Oloibiri and its environs would have been preserved as one of the nation's treasured spots.

Bayelsa State Governor, Goodluck Jonathan, resigned the fate of the state ever joining the national grid to a matter of indifference. If it does, fine; if it doesn't, fine. Governor Jonathan has therefore directed his commitment to the state government providing electricity for his people irrespective of what the federal government does to Bayelsa with the national grid.
Many had thought that upon the creation of Bayelsa State, the new status of the area will accelerate its connection to the national grid. But after ten years as a state, not only has Bayelsa's story line of federal neglect remained unchanged, it may have even degenerated, just like the state's environment.

Given the bounteous financial harvest from the state -- being the second largest producer of oil and gas, the nation's mainstay -- it is a crude irony that Bayelsa remains the only state yet to be connected to the national grid.
In the circumstance, we wonder how effective the federal government's strategy of setting up panels after panels in search of peace in the zone will be when it refuses to address the minimalist desires of the people. What really is so difficult getting the state connected to the national grid? That question is perplexing.

All the same, in the face of the power problems, the Bayelsa government has been expending huge resources in purchasing, servicing and running its own gas turbine which supplies electricity to the state. Often, it gets out of order and throws the state into darkness, sometimes for months.
That explains why almost every home in the state has a generator plant, and with all the attendant difficulty in finding petrol or diesel to buy in the state to power the generator sets (another irony).

It is bad enough that the electricity supply in the nation is most untrustworthy, but it is worse that some people, not the least a productive Bayelsa State, is not even opportuned to taste of that fitful power. This is not only embarrassing, but unacceptable.
The federal government must move beyond the worn-out rhetoric of empty promises, to concrete action. The whole nation deserves electricity, not the least Bayelsa State.