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yet again...

there are things that you must be taking for granted in your life. as you read this, if you reside in - say - the US or the UK, you expect to wake up this monday morning, grab a coffee, hit the train station, get to work. its a logical expectation. i mean, its so standard that it probably becomes a routine that you never even have to think about anymore. it just happens.

here in nigeria, the only thing that just happens is that you wake up in the morning. and then again, we all know that even that doesn't just happen (crime rate is soaring, people are choking to death from generator fumes, buildings are collapsing). it is now commonplace for a nigerian to go to work in the morning without drama, and find that he is not able to go home in the evening for a variety of reasons. you can never be too sure that the government hasn't blocked off your usual route home with no notice to anyone, or that tanker drivers have gone on strike etcetera or simply that the fares have hiked for no apparent reason. i bet many americans don't even know how fuel is transported to the various filling stations around them, much less about tanker drivers. here in nigeria, tanker drivers, oil workers unions and in fact anyone that has to do with petrol from production to distribution is a celebrity equivalent to paris hilton and britney spears combined. its just a part of your everyday life here that you must be aware of how fuel gets to your filling station otherwise you may find yourself stranded someday at the office.

as i sit and write this, there are long queues at filling stations everywhere. when i went to bed last night, everything was fine. this morning its chaos. i wonder if there is some midnight news network that people listen to and decide to rush to petrol stations and queue for fuel first thing in the morning but thats besides the point now. i'm clearly the last one to know.

when i wrote the blog last week on government's continued investment on the moribund power sector, i had recommended that we could realize savings if the government just utilized the money in buying generators for the masses. my friend aisha asked how the masses were supposed to fuel the generators and i told her that expecting the government to fuel our generators was going too far. i was wrong. now i see why she asked. it wasn't so much that the masses wouldn't be able to afford the fuel, its just that it will not be available. in this country, anything that requires more than your limbs to work, is complex and bound to fail. its really sad.

basically, the only alternative we had to the lack of public electricity (i.e. generating sets) has been grounded due to the lack of petrol today... so folks, while those of you in US and the UK will be going about your "routine" day, please remember those of us here who will be trying to sleep tonight by using our limbs to move newspaper pages back and forth in order to create some oxygen so we don't suffocate before the morning comes. thats my logical expectation.

i hope to see you again tomorrow if i'll still have clothes to wear to work...cos nothing is impossible at this rate. sheesh.

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