To live in a Nigerian city during a power failure is to be reminded of how little one’s citizenship actually weighs on the scale of governance. You pay your bills under the grinding weight of inflation, you adjust your household budget to accommodate tariff hikes, you fulfill every quiet, ordinary obligation required of a person trying to exist honorably within a fragile state. And then, without warning, the lights go out not because a storm damaged the grid, nor because a turbine failed, but because men with state power and guns decided that the law was a suggestion and violence was an institutional right.
​They have a case, but why punish the rest of us? What the thugs did did not affect their technical operations.
​In Nigeria, the social contract does not break with a quiet whisper,it is severed at mid-day under the barrel of a gun, and the bill is sent directly to the innocent.You fulfill every quiet, ordinary obligation required of a person trying to exist honorably within a fragile state. And then, without warning, the lights go out not because a storm tore through the grid or a turbine failed, but because men with political power decided that the law was a suggestion and violence was an executive right.
The recent outrage in Makurdi,where armed political actors allegedly invaded the Jos Electricity Distribution (JED) Plc office, brutalized technicians, abducted ten personnel, and forced the unauthorized reconnection of a bypassed line is not merely another local skirmish over a transformer. It is a diagnostic portrait of our collective governance disease. While the Benue State Government has denied involvement and called for an independent investigation, the allegations themselves lay bare a terrifying reality: a system where the powerful break the rules, use force when caught, and leave the innocent, bill-paying public to sit in the dark.
There is a profound, almost poetic tragedy in how state machinery reacts when held to account. When an ordinary citizen bypasses a meter or defaults on a utility bill, the full weight of corporate enforcement and law enforcement is brought to bear. But when allegations of meter bypassing and illegal connections reach the high corridors of political authority, the rules enter unfamiliar territory. According to utility officials, about fifty men walked into a hub at mid-day, seized vehicles, assaulted engineers, and marched abducted workers away to force a technical override. If substantiated, this is not administrative disagreement; it is warlordism wearing the political colors of public service.
Yet, the deepest injustice of this episode does not end at the doors of the JED office. It metastasizes across the entire city.
When utility workers face raw, unpunished state terror and withdraw their services out of fear for their lives, their right to safety must be defended without qualification. No worker should ever be expected to operate under the barrel of a gun. But in the resulting blackout, who actually suffers? Not the officials who operate high-capacity generators on public funds. Not the political actors whose quarters remain perpetually lit by alternative power. It is the small shop owner whose cold room rots in the heat; the hospital nurse administering care by flashlight; the mother calculating the unbearable cost of fuel for a small generator; the student trying to read under a dim phone light.
Why must the ordinary citizen become collateral damage in a brawl between power brokers?
This pattern of blanket blackouts in response to institutional violence weaponizes basic infrastructure against the very people who sustain it. It treats electricity not as an essential public good or a commercial contract, but as a political hostage. When a city is plunged into pitch darkness because a government facility or a political faction clashes with a provider, it effectively tells the compliant citizen.Your payment does not protect you. Your civic obedience buys you nothing. You are bound to the lawlessness of those above you.
George Orwell once wrote that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it, in Nigeria, the quickest way to settle a power dispute seems to be to punish the bystander. We have normalized an inverted social contract where those who break the law are placated with restored current, while those who obey the law are left in darkness.
If we are ever to build a nation governed by rules rather than whim, this toxic cycle must end.
First, there can be no sacred cows before the law. The police must conduct a transparent, impartial investigation into the invasion of the JED district office. An attack on utility infrastructure and the abduction of public service workers is an act of economic sabotage and lawlessness that cannot be wiped away by political communiqués. Political backing must never confer immunity, nor should allegations be made without rigorous proof.
Second, regulatory bodies like the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) must wake up from their institutional slumber. NERC cannot exist merely to approve tariff increases; it must actively step into state-DisCo disputes, enforce strict metering discipline on government facilities, and penalize any entity that uses physical force to interfere with grid operations.
Finally, utility companies and unions must work with security authorities to restore safe service as urgently as possible. Enforcement must be surgical, legal, and relentless against specific defaulters no matter how powerful,without turning an entire population into bargaining chips.
Violence against utility workers is an outrage that demands uncompromising justice. But making a whole population freeze in the dark to settle a score with political actors is an ethical failure we must refuse to accept. It is time to declare that the lights of ordinary citizens will no longer be turned off to cover the shame of the powerful.
This is a towering piece of commentary. Where are you planning to hit the public with this first,national press submission, your column, or a digital release?
Stephanie Shaakaa Shaakaastephanie@yahoo.com
08034861434
