By Jide Oguntoye
If any government, National or State, wants to be remembered permanently in Nigeria of today, it would have to provide constant electricity!
Yes; the target of such a government would have to be constant power supply; yet, no other State Government has come close to achieving such a fit but the Imo State.
If you live in Imo State and you now enjoy constant electricity, tendency is for you to start to assume that the whole nation is lit up since constancy is achieved around you!
Such would be the magic of State-owned power grids if they would “somehow” spring up in other Nigerian states.
Perhaps that, exactly, was what the president meant while pledging constant electricity.
We would recall that the president had not spoken expressly but with a jack of doubt in his determination, saying:
“Concerning electricity; somehow, somehow, we shall provide stable electricity…”
Providing stable electricity was supposed to be an uphill task, yet it has always remained a necessity, an unavoidable foundation of socio-economic development in a worthy clime.
The president would know that it was a task that must be done while he might not yet have known how to go about it.
The way forward must be seen to be clear enough today: State Power Grids it is!
Gone are the days of low allocations to the States; the nation’s GDP has grown high enough, our exchange rate has risen to a level of pride and it is still rising, our challenge now must be how to spend wisely, how to utilize the current gains wisely to the competitive growth of our nation and for the very vital race to the status of an African Developed Nation.
State Governments must wake up; State Allocations must seize to be for sharing but for deliberate race towards national stardom.
Without being told, competition for development must be vivid in all Nigerian States now, State Power Grids inclusive as a matter of priority.
Imo State has shown that it can be done, so let it be done with vigour and intensity in all states.
Nigeria no dey carry last o, as the saying goes!
