Over 50 Years After Giving Their Land For Nigeria's Kanji Dam Hydroelectricity, Host Communities Wallow In Darkness

AFEEZI HANAFI, who visited the Kainji Dam area in Niger State, writes that the communities who migrated to other areas to make a way for the hydropower projects are in the grip of darkness and poverty

Fifteen-year-old Seyida Ahmed doesn’t have even the faintest idea of city life unlike her peers residing in urban centres. Her world is stuck in dreary rural life.

She has learnt functions of home appliances at school, but longs for the day she will physically see a refrigerator, an electric cooker or a pressing iron working .

For her and other children in Shagunu, a drab suburb of Borgu Local Government Area of Niger State, watching films on television is a rare privilege they enjoy once or twice a week in the evening. They only savour such moments after trekking a two-kilometre distance to the residence of a villager, Mahmud Adamu, located near Shagunu Government Day Secondary School.

A farmer, Adamu is one of the three ‘respected personalities’ who have televisions in the rural community. He powers the TV with his small generator for the young villagers like Ahmed to socialise on weekends from 8pm to 10pm. On such days, boys and girls cram into his room, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the motion pictures.

“At times, we are more than 50 in his (Adamu’s) house,” Ahmed, a secondary school pupil, told Saturday PUNCH in her local dialect.

“My father wanted to buy a television too but he said he could not afford a generator and fuel cost,” she added amid a warm smile that animated her dark-complexioned face.

Some metres away, Ahmed’s grandfather, Jibril Inua, couched on a bench under a shed. The elderly man had tried in vain to turn on his radio transistor that hot afternoon to listen to the news. He would later realise that the pair of batteries powering the device were dead.

“The radio is the only thing that keeps me alive.  Since there is no electricity in this place, I use it to listen to the news and local music,” he said.

Amid uncertainties, Inua, in 1968, grudgingly relocated with his wife and two children to Shagunu on the banks of River Niger to start a new life, about 85 kilometres away from his ancestral home in Old Bussa, abandoning his hectares of farmland.

In his late 20s at the time of resettling, he was among thousands of dwellers of Borgu Kingdom within Kainji Dam in Old Bussa, who vacated their houses, farms and cultural heritage for dam construction and establishment of the hydropower plant generating electricity for the country.

In compensation, the Nigerian government assured him and other displaced indigenes that basic amenities such as schools, potable water, electricity and good roads would be provided in the new domains.

But 51 years after the 760 megawatts power plant began to serve the nation, Inua, now the Magaji N’geri (a high chief) of Shagunu, and other settlers scattered across over 100 localities in Borgu and Agwara local government areas of the state still grope in darkness, longing for a day they will be connected to the national grid.

“Agwara was carved out of Borgu LGA in 1991,” Inua, now in his late 70s, told our correspondent during a visit to the community early this month.

“Government promised us electricity, water, schools, hospitals and roads which they have yet to fulfil. Only New Bussa which is the headquarters of Borgu LGA and five other resettled communities enjoy electricity.”

As dusk sets in, the few signs of life in Shagunu and environs disappear into the approaching night. It is a moment of imminent dangers that residents always wish to escape in a hurry.

“We witness snakebites at night due to the blackout,” the village chief explained, gazing at a dusty standing fan at a corner of his room. The worn-out fan is the only appliance visible in his spacious apartment.

“We take victims of snakebites to New Bussa for treatment because there is no electricity in the health centre to preserve snakebite medicines (antivenom) in a refrigerator,” he added.

Another gruelling way the villagers have learnt to survive is by travelling 80 kilometres distance to New Bussa – about two hours’ journey – to grind grains whenever the diesel-powered machines in the community are faulty.

According to Fatima, Inua’s first wife, one of the four grinding machines has packed up while the three others are wearing out fast.

“If we want to grind rice and guinea corn, we take them to New Bussa because the machines here cannot grind them,” she said.

Over the years, the blackout has compounded the poverty heaped on most of the inhabitants and stripped them of the basic comfort they should enjoy as ‘kind hosts’ of the hydropower dam.

Instead, ancient lifestyles such as burning firewood to illuminate the surroundings at night and pressing clothes with ember-filled irons are commonplace in the neighbourhood. Each day brings forth untold hardship that cements the locals’ existence in boredom.

“It is difficult to live in this place. My pupils were amazed when I told them they can cook with electricity. They did not believe me because they have never experienced it before,” Abdullahi Sulyman, who teaches Civic Education in a secondary school in the area, said.

Born and raised in the Power State metropolis, the 35-year-old father of three forfeited an exciting life nine years ago when he took up teaching in Shagunu, residing in a hut-like-one-room apartment.

The house, one of the uniform structures built for the resettled residents of Old Bussa by the government, has a fitted tiny window that stifles ventilation.

Sulyman is among the seven instructors that teach pupils in both junior and senior classes. He told our correspondent that they used to be 10 teachers before three left to search for jobs in the city because they were tired of living a boring life.

He said, “Even policemen posted to this place ran away after spending two weeks or a month. When there is heat, our rooms are hot. We have to sleep outside at night using mosquito nets most times. People use lamps and burn firewood to see at night. Only three houses have generators.

“If the generator is on in any of those houses, you will see many people rushing there to charge their phones and lamps. Lack of electricity is a major setback for the community. There is no meaningful business here.”

Sulyman added that the outage in Shagunu forced many youths to permanently relocate to the cities having felt the ease attached to electricity after travelling out of the communities.

“Two years ago, a senator put up some wires and poles, but we don’t know when the rest will be completed,” Sulyman added, sounding hopeless.

The story is sadder in Amboshidi village, about five kilometres farther Shagunu. The houses the government built for those displaced by the dam dot the nook and cranny of the village, but there is no sign that electrification will commence in the village soon – 51 years after resettlement.

In the whole area, only Yakubu Rilwan, an assistant health officer in charge of a state-government owned clinic in the community, has a generator and television.

“Whenever I switch on the TV in the evening, about 100 people will throng into my room,” Rilwan said.

In Luma, another suburb of Borgu LGA, the people’s plight is no different. More than 13 years after power installations were carried out in the community, the residents have no idea when they would be connected to the national grid.

A community leader and head teacher, Luma Primary School, Musa Yerima, said some people came in 2007 as PHCN (Power Holding Company of Nigeria) workers and collected between N15,000 and N30,000 from them.

He stated, “They said they would use part of the money to connect us to the national grid. Different people have been coming here to tell us lies. They keep saying the installations will be energised soon. If you see politicians here, they come for campaign . After casting our votes for them, we won’t see them again. In fact, it was recently that we have a hospital in this community.”

Also, a former president, Federation of Borgu Youths, Mr Aliu Usman, told Saturday PUNCH that power supply in Borgu Kingdom, comprising Borgu and Agwara LGAs, had not extended beyond 10 kilometres from Kainji Dam.

Usman, who resides in New Bussa, explained that it took years of protests before six communities were connected to the grid.

“Right from the inception, we were not part of the plan to be electrified. As of 2008 when Kainji Dam was 40 years, we staged a protest to commemorate the anniversary. We lamented that 40 years of Kainji Dam, we were still in darkness.

“A substation was installed in 2013 after continuous protests and New Bussa was connected to the grid. Apart from New Bussa, Karabade, Dogo Gari, Munai, New Awuru and Wawa, which is the farthest covering about 10 kilometres, were also electrified. Many other communities that were resettled have not enjoyed electricity till today,” he said.

The current president of the Federation of Borgu Youths, Sadiq Aliu, lamented that power installations in Agwara and few other communities had been abandoned since 2007. He added that while some of the electric cables were vandalised, many poles caved in.

“The state government awarded a contract worth N300m for the rehabilitation of the installations two years ago but up till now, it has not been completed,” the president added.

PUNCH