Africa Journal  “N.E.P.A.”

By Pastor Steve Nute

Being rather claustrophobic, I did not take long to come awake in the close early morning heat. NEPA, Nigerian Electric Power Authority, had failed once again.

As I sit and type on an electric machine and need never worry about being interrupted by a power failure, I am reminded that this is one more area in which I must give thanks.

When NEPA stopped, so did the fans, when the fans stopped, so did my ability to breathe. By the restless churning sounds from the next room, I assumed that Doc was having the same difficulty. I got up and stuck my nose out the window in hope of relieving my starving lungs. It helped, but sleep was out of the question.

Put-put-put broke the silence, and with a wave of gratitude I saw the fan begin to spin as Ephraim, roused from sleep, put his life saving generator into service. It easily ran the lights and fans, but was not able to bear the load of the freezer. We will have to find a way to remedy this freezer situation.

A few hours later NEPA was back on line and for a few minutes after the generator stopped, the silence was loud. I jumped out of bed an turned the freezer on so we could drink cold water later. Eureka, that’s it. We would freeze about 30 plastic bottles of water and they would provide cooling when NEPA was down. This idea did work well and even provided us cool water when NEPA took a three day vacation.

The basic problem with the power was the total lack of what Doc called infrastructure. In the United States, we take almost for granted the fact of uninterrupted power, water, telephone and waste disposal. In Nigeria, it was another thing altogether.

When NEPA came to Awka a substation was built that would handle 30,000 people, more or less. As the population increased, the power capability did not, and the same station was now asked to provide for 90,000. This causes much confusion and a large number of power outages on a daily basis.

The limited substation capabilities, if one can believe the somewhat doubtful press, are not the only culprits in the black-out parade. It seems as if bandits, of which we will speak more, pull down power towers and poles and abscond with vast amounts of wire. We rather doubted this as an explanation of the daily outages, and were never able to verify this with our own eyes. 

One evening, during the Onitsha crusade, the sky came alive with what looked like a lightning display. We soon realized that it was only two NEPA wires arcing.
The power came and went in several second intervals, then stopped for keeps. Good old NEPA, affectionately described, “Never Expect Power Always.”

Limited power is better than no power and we were grateful for the comfort provided by those constantly spinning fans. We appreciated the cold liquid, and found walking to the rest room much easier with the lights on. But we also reminded each other to be thankful for Central Maine Power.
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