Edo residents billed for power they haven't received in months

On Monday in Benin City, protesters gathered at Ring Road carrying banners that read: "We pay for light and they give us darkness."

Governor Monday Okpebholo was passing by. He stopped. He joined the protest.

"I said, yes, we are all youths. I have come to join you," he told the crowd.

It would be touching if he weren't the governor.

Here's the full picture. Residents in parts of Edo haven't had power for between one and six months. Some communities bought their own transformers, poles, and cables because BEDC wouldn't fix the infrastructure. Then BEDC made them sign undertakings donating that equipment to the company. Then BEDC charged them ₦10–15 million for installation anyway. Prepaid meters, which the federal government says should be free, are being sold for between ₦150,000 and ₦400,000.

BEDC's response to all of this? The outages aren't their fault. The national grid reduced their allocation.

BEDC blames the grid. The grid blames generation. Generation blames gas supply. Gas supply blames pipeline vandalism. The pipeline blames whoever stole the crude.

The buck travels in a full circle and lands back on the person paying the estimated bill.

The governor says he wants to "break the monopoly." He wants Edo's electricity distribution to work like telecoms, with multiple competing providers. That's not the worst idea. It's also a stakeholders meeting scheduled for Tuesday and a timeline of never.

Your generator is the infrastructure. It has been for thirty years. That's not an accident.