Blackout is an anomaly which decreases a lot of activities both on the personal and on a business level. It's not fun to be in a house where there is a blackout. I don't enjoy that and it's just so sad that this same 'anomaly' is now a norm in my part of the world.
Nigerians will tell you so much about our struggles with insufficient power supply. It's something we've sadly come to terms with. For most Nigerians, it's more weird to have an uninterrupted power supply for 24 hours than to spend 3 days without any power supply. We are just not used to having uninterrupted power. The idea of it happening sounds very alien to us.
As you can already imagine, I've experienced power blackouts in several cases. We've all learned to improvise and embrace alternative sources of power supply. Most households and businesses in Nigeria have standby generators which they use to generate power whenever they are faced with the issue of blackouts.
Usage of Solar panels is also on the increase. If you can't afford any of that, you can still make do with Power Banks. I have a few power banks which I've been using for a very long time and each of them is worth every penny spent to get it.
Now, lemme tell of the worst incident of power outage that I've ever experienced;
During my days as a University student, I lived in school hostel from my sophomore year to my graduation year. This is mostly because I couldn't afford to live off-campus. House rent over there is a big deal. However, there is an adorable advantage that comes with living in school. We are usually guaranteed a few hours of power supply each day even if there is no power supply in town.
Our school has very big standby generators that power the whole school environment from 7 pm to 11 pm. This was very helpful because as students, electricity is one of the important things we need for studying at night, ironing our uniforms, keeping our gadgets charged and whatnot. It's hard to spend a day without seeing electricity.
Sometime in 2016, just at the beginning of the second semester, we started having some power supply issues. The Power distributors failed to provide electricity to our school and we were not too bothered because we expected the school to turn on their standby generators by 7 p.m. The time came and nothing happened. We didn't see any sign of electricity. None at all.
It was a very tough night and many people showed up in the next day's lectures with rumpled uniforms. Students were carrying around their gadgets with their chargers in search of where to charge their gadgets, but the odds of finding such a place were very unfavorable. When it was nearing 7 p.m. that day, we patiently waited for something inspiring to happen, but all hope was shattered.
After two whole days of no electricity, the inconveniences became too unbearable for students. The school completely ignored the students. No memo was passed around about the issue at hand. By the third day, when it was time to on the generator and nothing happened, students went wild and broke into a protest.
That protest rocked the school environment. A couple of windows got shattered. A bunch of flowers got messed up. As far as I could tell, that was a peaceful protest, but the school Admins thought otherwise.
Everyone was forced into a 2-months break and all the students of our University paid #10,000 each as a reparation fee for the 'damages' caused during the protest. That's A LOT of money. The worst part of this issue is that we only spent a month at the beginning of the semester before we got forced to go on that break.
Immediately it got called off, we came back only to be faced with the end of end-of-semester Exams. A lot of people had very poor results due to this and some even had to reseat for several courses after failing to get decent grades in the Exam.
This incident of protesting due to blackouts and having to pay #10,000 as a reparation fee happened twice during the years I spent as a student at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. I didn't enjoy any of that.
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You have just narrated the same issue happening in my school here. All Nigerian universities encounter such a moment especially while living on a school campus. When you are enjoying light even if it is powered by generators from 7 pm to 11 pm and suddenly, the school refuses to power it and the worst is not releasing a memo to make the students know what is going on. This thing affects every student and when they decide to go for a protest, they end up paying for damages. That is school life and funny enough, this will continue to happen and everyone will keep having stories to share about the lack of power supply even in the school compound. #dreemport
Exactly. This has become a tactics schools use to extort money from students. They make students to suffer unnecessarily and they still force them to pay a reparation fee. Stuff like that are very sad to experience.
Throughout the two months we spent at home after the protest before coming back to resume the session, all the lectures we would have had became a thing of the past because. We just got called bacj and jumped straight into exam.
I'm sure the school doesn't even care about any of that and so many people had carry-over due to that issue.
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Chai...this was really unfortunate for you students, and funny enough this isn't seen as an issues, I just thank God my days in college was different, if there's no light then generator comes to play in. Not like one or two issues doesn't arise, I remember once they took light in the middle of exam's time, and someone like me I go to nightclass to read all night, that affected me, and the generator had issues. We have even stayed without water for week just because there wasn't light. Imagine the terrifying state of the hostel especially female hostels, in which girls need water 24/7. It's was terrible though. But as you said we have come to terms with it, which isn't right. From #dreemport
Yeah. That's the reality we all have to face as far as Nigeria continues to operate the way it does and this isn't limited to school environment. A lot of work places that need electricity to operate know for sure that they can't count on our electricity distributors.
It's a sort of survival of the fittest and everyone is trying their best to explore any alternative means of power supply that is available.
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Hmm this made me remember when we also protest in our school due to increase in school fees, we had to pay #30,000 per student, and without the damages fee no exam.
Wow... 30k for that is no joke oOoOO. That's enough feeding money that will last very long for a student.
Schools shaaa. They know the trick they use to squeeze money out of students.
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I feel for you.. it is not wrong to protest when it is done without damaging properties. If it were a peaceful protest I am sure, it wouldn't have caused you guys harm. Paying for damaged properties that you know not how they were destroyed and also going for an unexpected break was too much, your school is too strict. Sorry for that experience boss.
That's it, Bro. At some point, we got to realise that there is really nothing wrong with the generators but the school refused to on it so that they would provoke students to go for a protest.
Once students fall into the trap, everyone will be forced to pay a reparation fee which is always used to do no repair because nothing was really damaged.
It's a disgusting stuff
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