By Josef  Omorotionmwan
IN the beginning, the foundation level    at the primary school was very difficult. If you failed very badly at the promotion examination, you were sometimes demoted. If you were in primary three, for instance, while the successful ones went to primary four, you were moved to primary two.

Because of the upward and downward movement, some of the pupils who were already in primary three when we started school were still struggling around that same region when we finished six years later. In fact, some of the pupils were already cutting “banga” while in the primary school.

Much later, things began to change at the higher level. If you attempted the Qualifying Test, QT, to the General Certificate of Education, GCE and performed very poorly, you were barred from attempting the QT for some five years. Affected persons simply complied without asking any question as to its enforcement at that pre-analog age, when computers were not yet born.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Our people are daring. How could they be admonishing our own President, Dr.Goodluck Ebelle Azikiwe Jonathan like a schoolchild? Admittedly, the party is supreme and it is superior to any individual, no matter how highly placed. That does not still reduce from the status of the President. Rather, it justifies the clear warning issued by the President at the dinner in honour of the National Working Committee of the PDP in Abuja on Monday, April 23, 2012.

We are what we say we are. The President has, perhaps unwittingly, reduced himself from the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to the President of the PDP. Listen to his open admission: “The President is elected by the party and must serve the party…”. We think the President is elected by the people and he is accountable to them. He serves the people.

What goes around comes around. When we were growing up, we heard of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe being hailed as the Zik of Africa. He later became the Owelle of Onitsha. Behaving to type, Jonathan has so quickly transformed himself from the President of Nigeria to the President of the PDP. That, perhaps, is the Azikiwe in him playing out.

At a recent gathering, which was attended by my son and me, we met this friend, a brilliant lawyer of the senior advocate level and he was introducing me to my son: “Your father and I were childhood friends. We grew up together here in Benin City… Your father used to beat me in mathematics…”.

The introduction was so alluring that I would have been a moral idiot not to accept it. But the truth is that I grew up at Oghada as a village boy and I did not come to Benin City until after I finished from primary school. In mathematics, I had two left hands and I couldn’t have beaten anybody. As for secondary school, instead of coming West, I went East, where I schooled in Onitsha.

My son was enjoying the introduction and I did not want to destroy his joy by reducing myself by being brutally frank. After all, he should also know that his father has been very bright from birth. All the same, I was careful not to accept the introduction in open affirmation – just in case the man later realised he was doing a wrong introduction. I just kept smiling like a small fool.

This is the point to which the Federal Government has reduced Nigerians on the issue of electricity. Power supply is now at the level of apology. The Federal Government’s May Day gift to all of us is a bag of apologies from the Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji for the erratic power situation in the country and urged them to exercise patience, saying the government is working hard to address the epileptic power situation in the country.

The Minister puts it    rather bluntly: “We are deeply concerned about the recent experiences of Nigerians with reference to the erratic delivery of power supply for domestic and industrial uses. The entire power sector finds it extremely important to express to Nigerians our deep regrets for this happening”. Nnaji attributes the power collapse to the low level of water in some of the power plants and shortage of gas supply, inadequate human capacity and insufficient system synergy.

This is a total surrender! In beating a retreat, this is the first time in the history of this country that power supply is being reduced to segmentation. Nnaji still expresses it more elegantly: “We have the short term, medium term and long term solution to power supply in the country and the Minister of Petroleum Resources is ready to collaborate with us to ensure that we receive adequate gas supply to our gas power plants”.

Talking about synergy, it is clear to us that the Federal Government lacks internal democracy in its operations. The Federal Government is not talking to itself. That explains why the Minister of Petroleum Resources has now, perhaps reluctantly, agreed to make gas available. And this is what the Federal Government is shamelessly bringing to us at the market place!

We need to be educated. What type of water shortage are we talking about, at a time when we are thinking that too much water is our problem? Is it not related to the same flood water that has sacked virtually all our cities and hamlets throughout the country? What is the problem with water?

A cursory look at the segmentation leaves us with no hope, whatsoever. Devoid of semantics, the short term is defined as the remaining part of 2012, when we are possibly entitled to total darkness. Medium term, between 2013 and 2015, might bring a little relief and the long term, from 2015 to 2020, when this administration shall have been out of power, is when power supply will come in abundance! Bravo!