The issue here is neither about political power nor spiritual power; rather, it is about electricity. The two scenarios presented above are meant to literally guide you into understanding how people view or react to the subject of power.
The following gruesome facts were presented by our dear Professor Barth Nnaji on December 5, 2008. "In Africa, the installed capacity of electricity is 103,000 megawatts (MW). This represents less than 5 percent of the world's installed capacity in spite of Africa being the second largest continent in the world with a population that is close to 20 percent of the world population. Even more remarkable is that much of this electricity is in South Africa and North Africa: therefore, sub-Saharan Africa is left in darkness at night with extremely poor electricity availability and even power accessibility by the rural and urban poor…"
There is no gainsaying that Nigeria's electricity situation can be likened to a coma. This time, no doubt, is really a desperate moment for the country and her leaders. And almost always, desperate times demand desperate measures. That is why it is no big deal that some state governors authorise the powering of street lights with generators. But how did we get here?
You need not stretch your thinking; visit our universities and inspect their engineering faculties and also peruse their curricula. Find out how many power engineers they have graduated in the last 20 years, at graduate, post-graduate and post-doctorate levels. Also see if you can find any university that has researched on and can design or has designed a turbine - the most essential part of any power plant - before even talking about designing and building a whole power plant. If your findings do not rattle you beyond despair, then search further if you will find around the country any company that can design a turbine.
It beats every imagination why our leaders seem not to have realised that universities and polytechnics are a principal source of high value-added human and intellectual capital: the future of our national competitiveness will depend on our ability to compete in the conceptual economy - where the most important contest is being fought in the arena of ideas, learning and delivering new kinds of value to the marketplace. Do our leaders not realise that power is a product of education? For how long should we keep ignoring the goose that lays the golden eggs?
In fact, without sounding like the man who saw tomorrow, I can tell you that we would be in this "Power Coma" for some while to come - because we have not started. Or was it that we started and failed? In 2005, when the power sector reforms were beginning to unfold, O.C Iloeje - one of the most knowledgeable power engineering authorities we have - exercised fears in one of his lectures that the power sector reforms would fail if the politicians hijack it. Have the politicians not hijacked it?
In the power continuum, to deliver a steady supply of electricity, you need not only world class engineers but also facility managers, IT personnel, project managers, visionary leaders, competent entrepreneurs, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, etc - all these world-class players would have to be trained at grade A universities. Can we boast of any in the country currently?
I deeply agree with the perspective expressed in the first paragraph - no apologies. If you ask me, I would say emergency should be declared in education.
Money 
