Mr Black in Naija

i visited home country again on a work assignment and for a change i was in abuja the seat of power. i have visited abuja a couple of times but this was my first time staying longer than a couple of days. if i ever have to come back to live in home country, abuja is definitely one of the places i would choose, second only to my home state (after the current governor must have since finished the road projects). the roads in abuja are wide, the streets are well lit (at least in the maitama area where i stayed). transportation is affordable ( i guess because you can actually get to where you want to go in record time). food? well i was taken to a place where the average meal cost an arm and a leg and extra but i came to discover there were other places where you could get a good meal at a decent rate. sharwama or something like that it was called. they even had a delicacy from my home state a meal made from cocoyam wrapped in plantain leaves (ekpang nkukwo) .

a week may be too soon to judge abuja but i think like my host country, if a place looks good in the first few days, there is usually not much deviation a year or two later. the only problem i find in abuja is that it’s largely populated by nigerians. you easily notice this when you hit the road. there is an apparent confusion in the way people drive. wide roads and all but you get that feeling that a lot of the drivers have no clue about road rules. in my host country you can always tell a speed lane, the roundabouts are well marked and the speed limits and speed bumps signs are placed well ahead on the road not almost at the speed bumps. in abuja the speed bump signs jump at you almost as you arrive at the bump. and only when you are almost at the junction that you realize you were meant to be driving at 30km/hr and not 100km/hr. lest i forget we all know about phcn. light has been stable since i came, of course i can’t really tell since i’m in a hotel but from what i gather like the normal naija city, there are areas with lots of power and areas that have epileptic supply. anyway, we wait december ending for the promised 6000mw.

talking about power in naija, i have a solution which i think would work better than the endless wait for government to provide stable power (both in the polity and electricity). i believe if every nigerian pooled in their numerous generators we could actually power the country better. if one considers the number of households running generators as the most reliable source of power with phcn as the unreliable back-up power. either hooking them up in a parallel or series connection ( i forget the exact details of the physics) i’m sure we’ll be able to generate enough power to enable phcn function in its full capacity as a back-up ( during diesel/fuel scarcity). it still beats me though with all the sun in africa we cannot seem to figure out how to make good use of solar energy. if a malawian lad could power his village through a windmill one wonders…

abuja is definitely a nice city to live in once you can afford the overpriced leases.