Reserved Treatment

One of the sectors as an average Nigerian in Nigeria that can make you act like a lout or lose your cool aside the banking sector is electricity.

People who are quite familiar with these occurrences know that often times, when one goes into the bank to lay a complaint in hopes to get the problem rectified in no time, he ends up screaming the place down and causing a terrible scene, throw a few threats here and there; and this is usually out of frustration before he is either attended to, or escorted out of the building.

Most of us have either witnessed this once or a couple of times, or even been in the shoes ourselves.

Now, the electricity sector (AEDC) popularly referred to as NEPA have taken the front seat in driving people crazy, especially the smaller branches situated in communities to meet the quick needs of the residents. Even the invention of prepaid meter has not helped to curb the situation, as every single day, a couple of residents must assemble at the office to complain bitterly at their unprofessionalism, delay in handling their electricity problems, or even taking their money and not fixing their electricity.

Some Nigerians, as always, have devised a means to go about this painlessly, albeit illegally, but even that has not solved the problem entirely. In fact, for an average Nigerian to say that he has not had to deal with their madness is almost impossible.

This early Saturday morning when people who have worked tirelessly over the week are supposed to be enjoying their weekends, three angry residents have already paid a visit to the NEPA office. They met just one of their staff members and began to complain about their electricity being disconnected for a couple of days now, and how they have been unable to do anything about it until now, because they have been extremely swamped with work. According to them, they have been very cooperative in abiding by their rules, and are in fact, prepaid users, and so they have no clue as to why they had to be disconnected without a reason.

They were not even served a notice!

The appropriate and official thing to do was to serve a notice to the residents if anything was out of place; inform them of a possible disconnection if not attended to, and give them at least, a deadline instead of picking up their ladders and disconnecting them while they were at work. The staff on ground could not give them a valid reason for the discomfort they have put them in, and worse, he made no attempt to solve the problem. He just stood there passing the blame to another staff who was absent from duty.

They asked to speak with the manager, but he said the manager had signed out for the weekend and will not be on seat until Monday. Now, these people will not be able to meet the manager on Monday, because they will be at work trying to earn their daily bread. They asked for the manager’s phone number instead, and the staff said he did not have it-he probably thought he was dealing with infants or mere fools.

These residents not only realized that speaking to him like a normal human being was not going to solve the problem, his nonchalance infuriated them, and before they knew it, their voices were already hitting the roof. They started to threaten that if they did not see electricity like the other residents in the community as soon as possible, they were going to pull down all the wires of the other residents. One of them continued say “Do you know who I am?” “No, you don’t know who I am!” “Don’t let me take this up oh!” “I want to speak with your manager!”

However, being that their main job is to drive people crazy, and so he is already used to such tantrums, he was not moved at all. They spent hours there, talking in high angry tones, frustrated that it was taking up some part of their day and worse, a seemingly futile attempt at restoring electricity to their homes. Nevertheless, the thought of spending another week without electricity made them remain there.

Eventually, their forced patience paid off when the staff who was blamed for the disconnection showed up, but yet again, the immediate rectification they wanted did not happen, because be it as it may, they could not work on it on a Saturday. The residents had no choice but to wait until Monday, as they have been promised that their electricity would be fixed unfailingly.

They left, like most others who had come with enough anger and determination to fill a tank but did not get their problems solved.