Each household is its own power and water company

Africa’s Crisis of Democracy By LYDIA POLGREEN NYT: April 23, 2007

The bulk of Africa now falls into the “partly free” category. In the middle of that group is Nigeria, a nation of 140 million people divided among 250 ethnic groups and two major religions, Islam and Christianity, all of whom live in a space twice the size of California. It is rich in oil, exporting about two million barrels a day, but the riches that oil brings have not translated into meaningful development.

In Kano, a once vibrant manufacturing center, the contradictions of Nigeria’s eight-year-old experiment with elected government are vividly on display. Far from building a unified country aimed at the greatest good for all, Nigeria has instead become an every-man-for-himself nation. In Kano’s Government Residential Area, where the wealthy live, each household is its own power and water company. Plastic water tanks on spidery legs tower over the tiled roofs, each fed by an electric pump sucking water from a private well. The electric company provides light just a few hours a day, so the air is thick with the belching diesel smoke of a thousand generators, clattering away in miserable, endless unison. The poor must manage however they can. With the decline of manufacturing and few formal jobs, many residents make a meager living off one another’s misery.