Generator
An ode to the generator
What started out as an intervention in the short term has come to witness a mass infiltration. Forcing dependency upon an entire generation and denying opportunities for innovation. Prancing around like a messiah on a peace mission. You have come to overstay your purpose.
The introduction of gasoline generators into Nigeria’s oil-producing economy was meant to be a temporary fix. A fix that had come in the form of two 60 kilowatts generators that powered electricity to the then colony of Lagos in 1886. In 2022, the Nigerian economy has become increasingly more reliant on generators.
Ordinarily, this piece of writing should be to pay you homage and bid you farewell, but alas, this is a far cry from that. Your presence ever increasingly permeating our society is a ticking time bomb. The neighbouring countries we had sent packing on the basis that they had overstayed their welcome mostly have no use for you, but yet, here we are.
Residents have grown thicker lungs and acclimatized to the music from your engine. What is noise when you can be more? You have gone ahead to become the alarm clock for an entire neighborhood. We all know when it is 7 p.m. and the deafening silence that pervades us reminds us to hold our government accountable by the break of dawn.
Servicing you every month is not enough, one must pay libation to the oil tank every other fortnight. To think the loss of lives from CO2 emissions is not enough, we must join the long queues at the petrol station to power you. Long lines that most people should not have to deal with in the first place, as they would normally use public transport and have no cars of their own.
Success in any new business is nothing but a phantom wish if you are not included in the budget. At least these days we do not have to pull you by the ears to come on. Out of the magnanimity of your heart, you stretched yourself and provided us with a switch button. We thank you. You even went the extra mile and turned yourself noiseless, a great feat in comparison to the days of your humble beginnings in the corridor of a face-me-I-face-you.
But still, it does not cover the distressing cost of maintaining you. On a Sunday evening, one could decide to wait an extra hour beyond the agreed 7:00 p.m. time to switch you on only for you to refuse to come on. Mind you, replacing your switch button does not come cheap, so we revert to the rope, but even that decides to give up on life. No mechanic within reach to lie to us that it is rather your battery or plug that is faulty and the next day is a public holiday.
So in your absence, we are forced to enjoy the evening breeze and make merry with family, as was our way anyway before you infiltrated our communities. And if not for lack of properly ventilated spaces for security reasons and forced company from flying objects, we would have no use for you. You should be receiving a petition from us soon for the gross misrepresentation of a part named “plug,” but before we take action, there is still time for it to change its name because what is in a plug if it is not sure?
The pattern is becoming glaring, anytime we lament about your inadequacies, you take it out on the national grid, and then, in turn, the national grid takes it out on us by collapsing. You have mastered the method of the Nigerian elite — to amass wealth and act unconcerned about the plight of the ordinary Nigerian citizen. Not that you’re to blame, we gave you all that power. Or wait, you gave us all that power. The chicken or the egg, we might never know which came first. But like death and other things that are certain, at some point, you would have to be gone too — soon.
With an abundance of natural resources, the electrification of Nigeria through alternative means is bound to lead to a reduction in your demand, and boy! would we love to see it. Love and light.
