Let there be light in the delta.

last updated 8 January 2015

Nigeria

Editorial

Guess which Nigerian state still doesn’t have electricity? asked Lagos’ This Day in an editorial. The answer is the very state that provides most of the country’s oil revenue. Fifty years after Shell struck oil in Bayelsa state, the region is still not connected to the national grid. Almost every household in Bayelsa gets its power from a personal generator that must be supplied with oil. The need to supply family generators is a main reason that poachers tap pipelines. “This is not only embarrassing, but unacceptable.” Yet State Gov. Goodluck Jonathan seems to have given up even trying to get the federal government to provide power; he’s now working on his own state plan for an electric grid. He shouldn’t have to use state resources, particularly given “the bounteous financial harvest” Nigeria gets from Bayelsa. The federal government sets up “panel after panel in search of peace” in the Niger Delta region. We bet that peace would come quicker if the government simply bothered to address “the minimalist desires of the people.”