My Smart Sprinkler System Part 1.

Introduction
You might be aware that I have been frustrated about forgetting to switch off appliances before leaving home. I guess its a sign of old age, my forgetfulness is becoming fairly pronounced. but instead of grumbling, as a technological determinist, I decided to create a smart home.

I have been tinkering with microcontrollers for some years, but creating a smart home got me jumping into the deep end of Internet of Things IOT. I have short listed several projects that I will need to create to have a smart home, and you can find them from looking through my blog for IOT and my smart home. here -

As you can see I have a whole lot of projects to keep me busy for a long long time. but not to worry, they are all simple modular systems that latch unto each other to create a smart system. I usual, I will share them here with you. you can follow the steps and recreate them for yourself if you have the basic skills of soldiering and following simple instructions. I will also share Gerber files, circuit diagrams and a whole lot of information to help you build these systems on your own.

To Sprinkle Or not to Sprinkle
for today, I will focus on the plants in my compound. I want to be able to automatically water the lawn, plants around the compound at preset times every single day of the year without much manual intervention. Yes one can easily buy a working water sprinkler of the shelve in any hardware store. but there is no fun in that. Plus, we can build a smarter system that takes cognizant of the weather to decided if it should give the plants their usual dose of water, or not water at all if it has rained in the last 24 hours.



The making of the Project Circuit Boards PCB
Examples abound on the internet on how to create a PCB.

1. Transfer a circuit trace from a Laser Printer to a paper and unto a PCB board.
2. Rule traces manually by hand.

feel free to look them up and choose which one to use. but there are basically only two methods open to you, One, to carefully draw it with your hand using a permanent maker like a fine point sharpie, or two, to use a purpose built application to design the circuit and print it out using a Laser printer (not a bubble jet ink based printer).

1. Manual Trace
I typically use the manual tracing method only when the design is simple or I don't have access to a Laser Printer and time is of the essence. Though this would typically give a rough amateurish outcome, but as usual, I put a little method to the madness. As expected, this manual process, though fast, creates a not so professional outcome. but there are a whole lot of lessons to learn from this method, so I will show you how to make a PCB using the manual writing method.

1st step is to clean the PCB with steel wool and use 4 pins to sandwich the dotted project board, the two sided board against a piece of paper.

I usually pull out a dotted project PCB as a guide to help me mark the necessary points from studying my circuit on the bread board, I experiment with where each component will fit by placing them on the paper, punching a tiny hole through the doted project board.

 At the end I get a fair idea of where things would end up and I rule the lines on the paper.

I then manually rule the necessary traces with a sharpie (permanent marker). If I make mistakes, I wipe them off with cotton wool dipped in acetone and touchup with a fine tipped sharpie or any permanent marker after it dries.

These markings are actually thin plastic traces protecting the copper upon which they are written. the protection prevents corrosion by the chemicals when dropped in an etching bathe. Spend all the time you need reviewing the traces, make sure there are not shorts and that each pad connects to a matching hole that way when drilled the components will easily fall in place. this is particularly important if they are surface mounted components - I avoid  them cos they are very difficult to solder, but they are cheaper and also small, ideal for compact designs.

If you are able to follw these steps you will have something similar to the image above and ready for the next phase - etching the copper plate in an acid bathe. I will show you just how in another article. until then cheers.

Internet Of Things IOT

Hello Thinkers, Its been quite a while since I hooked up, but believe me, I have been very busy doing so many many things. I can only sum them up as my deep dive into the rave of the moment - Internet of Things (IoT). We have all had our share of that sad moment after driving hours into town only to realize that you didn't switch off the air conditioner at home. Or perhaps, there was no power when you left, but you know you left several appliances running before the power cut - meaning that you will be running (wasting) energy with no one around to enjoy them. In the 3rd world where these are scares resources, no body wants anything to go to waste. It could be anything;-

you forgot to close the garage door. you forgot to switch the generator to manual to prevent it from kicking in when there is a power cut. You forgot to switch off the TV, Fan, AC, etc. depending on where you are, your problem might be different.

The Problem
My problem was how to create a smart home, that allows me the freedom of switching these things off even after I have left home. Yes! without coming home, or calling in the neighbors. Literally from anywhere I am in the world. My plan is to create a smart home, capable of doing the following;-

1. Open & Close the gate (electric gate already exist)
2. Arm Electric fence
3. Let the Dogs out of their kennel 
4. Monitor the weather to ascertain steps to take for air-conditioning, watering plants, letting out dogs, switching on lights, notifying the pool maintenance guy,
5. Switch off / on several equipment's
1. Generator
2. Air Conditioners
3. Fence / Outside Lights
4. Borehole pump
5. Swimming pool pump
6. Swimming pool lights
6. Monitor the battery level of the inverter
7. Monitor the temperature of the deep freezer
8. Water the lawn and the plants at home
9. Monitor the security alarm
10. Track motion after hours
11. etc.

As expected, I had to do some research, and I found several projects I could latch unto - one of the is My Sensors Project. MySensors is an open source hardware and software community focusing on do-it-yourself home automation and Internet of Things IOT. They provide easy to follow build instructions, ready to use code examples and adaptable open source hardware designs. All of this runs on the MySensors software library for secure communication that has been battle-tested with more than 20 of the leading home automation controllers on the market.

MyController?
Controllers as the name suggests are the brain behind an IOT architecture. The controller is the unit like a CPU is to a computer, that does the processing of data fed in by sensors like temperature sensor on a node circuit tucked away somewhere in the compound. The controller uses this data to make rule based decisions (as created by me) to set switches on or off as desired. For example, I could use the rain gage data that shows that it rained today to tell the water sprinkler not to come on as scheduled every 4:00pm. In addition, the controller can tell, the node that controls the fence light to come on as soon as it gets dark, this could be set at a specific time, or just based on day light, the latter being the preferred as it will switch on the lights both in summer or winter when day light is delays or even during a storm when it could get dark even at noon.

My choice of controller was stressful. I was looking for a neat easy to use (and understand) controller with an active community to help when I get stock. I settled on MyController another open source project by JKandasa. The system is based on pure java (back end) and angularJS (front end) it can run it in any platform supporting Java SE 1.8. I liked its look and feel. and as expected JKandasa himself was readily on hand to support newbies like me. but after a difficult start and several huddles I faced with frustration, I went back to the square one to look for an alternative... my research lead me to Domoticz.

Domoticz is a free/open-source Home Automation System that lets you monitor and configure various devices such as lights, switches, temperature, rain, wind, UV and meters (electric, gas, water). It appeared quite powerful and intuitive as it promised. In less than an hour after I downloaded and installed it, it had latched on to the flimsy MySensors Gateway that I had arranged on my breadboard. with that, my journey has begun.

IOT here we come1

...and there was light.

I remember vividly as a toddler, sitting at the back of my Mums Puegot 404 on our way back from a weekend in the village. As we drove into my estate, I noticed how we were suddenly enveloped in darkness as a power failure from the local utility ensued. I realized it did not affect the headlamp of the car and as all inquiring minds, I asked my Dad why. His answer was short - "NEPA!" and everyone in the car broke out in laughter... I thought the joke was on me, I was too young to understand why they were laughing, but almost 3 decades on, recent events have reminded me to laugh. NEPA - What a joke!

The Power Holding company went on strike yesterday (25 Aug 2010) and called it off early this morning! I am sure a lot of Nigerian stand up comedians will have a field day on this one. So they eventually decided to formalize their 5 decade old prank? If an old man like me witnessed frequent power cuts as a toddler and after so many years the problem still persists, then we truly have a problem. The practice has only gotten worse, its a mixed grill as usual. The 'Haves' and 'Have Nots' - Some people have never experienced a power cut at all, I know of an area in Abuja that has 24 hours of steady power supply, yet there are other locations across the nation where you would be lucky to squeeze out 5 hours from the utility company. In Lagos, NEPA truck patrol the town looking for any "Owanbes" that are yet to 'settle'. When I fist moved to Abuja in 2000, I was so used to the every other day power cut in Lagos that I was afraid of losing my electrical equipments to a constant 24 hour service. Who says they don't know what they are doing? Nigerians have leant how to profiteer over every single issue. The lecturers have strangulated the educational institutions, and Government is playing dumb, while private schools smile to the banks every year.

Too many questions come to mind - What is the difference with not being on strike and yet no power? How difficult is this thing? Is it rocket science? Even if it is how are other dwarf African nations doing it? (Sorry, I hear Nigerians are Giant of Africa). If NEPA has been secretly striking for 50 years, shouldn't we round their bosses up and jail them?

As the vice president of my estate care taker committee, l lead an entourage to visit our local PHCN office to familiarize ourselves on their activities, etc. (the real reason was to know who calls the shots) I learned quite a lot in the short time we were there. I had always thought PHCN to be a crude backward company using ancient equipments Mongo Park would recognize, but i was shocked at their state of the art computer room, where they could switch off power for any street they liked. they call it load shedding. A typical process played out in our presence. A walkies-talkie holaed out some "Base Yanky Papa Oscar" bullshit! and then "Drop 2, 5, and 12 - My girlfriend Mama need light on Port Harcourt Street". I was shocked to learn that their bosses and girlfriends could determine whether you sleep in a pool of sweat or went to work with a well ironed shirt the next day. It was then I realized what Nigeria must do if she was to solve this power problem.

We have examples to follow, We solved a similar problem with Nitel and landlines... Competition. Sack all the top management and privatize PHCN. Address the distribution problem by first reverting to evenly phased allocation of houses. Then Lease the distributed network of lines to different companies to run (PHCN can not be a private monopoly).

But there are still issues to be dealt with. like retired police and soldiers took to robbery at the end of the war to make ends meet. retired NEPA staff are responsible for the rewiring that leads to congestion and overload and blown transformers across the country. When the officials take you offline, their former counterparts reinstate you. When the blue phase is down, the entire street unwittingly jump to the red phase, bug it down for a few hours and when it over loads and blows out, everyone jumps on the yellow phase, and the circle continues. Back in the days each house was on one phase (just like here in the west only 2 lines comes into your house). Encourage private distribution to the grid. Allow people who have solar, wind and alternate generation plants to add to the National grip. Okay enough of the dreams - I am aware that a group of those people who want us to continue in our suffering wont allow this. The so called cabal that control the importation and distribution of Generators. Who are these people? How do we know that they truly do not want us to succeed?

Brings me to the role of the press. In any nation that thrives, the press plays an important role of watch dog! If you open the pages of the tabloids, you can easily discern what the focus of the paper is on - the quality of the news material goes along way to form public opinion. The message must persuade, detect, amplify, thematize, and dramatize issues that are pertinent to the survival of that society. Our national dailies continue to focus on personalities rather than issues. The newspapers were full of IBB and Atiku related news instead of issues that affect the people directly. What will a real investigative expose on the power issue be like, not really about how much Government has put into it (we are tired of hearing about that), but reveal the faces of this so called cabal. Yes I am not naive, I know papers will not publish negative stories of their creditors. but Journalism has answer for that too - it is called syndication. Publish your work on other peoples papers, in other countries if need be. Technology has even exaburated the issue by blogs, emails, twit, and Social Networks etc where these information can be sold. That is the only way we can wrestle this thing out of their hands. The same thing has to be done for the transport industry - Nigeria has no flag ship in aviation, no railway... What a joke!

N.E.P.A. stands for Never Expect Power At-alltimes (though they masqueraded themselves as the National Electric Power Authority for a long time) and recently, it was aptly re-branded as P.H.C.N. - Please Hold Candle Now! What a joke.

Hobbyist: Workspace

I can’t write a line today without saying that every hobbyist deserves a dedicated workspace/place. I once had a study but as soon as the baby came after marriage, Titi turned it to the baby room. I have been running my projects from a desk in our bedroom. This has always been a subject of concern to Titi. My projects lay in the balcony, the guest bedroom, the walkway the guest bedroom and sometimes our bedroom.

With Titi away on a one week break to United States, I moved into the room permanently. I must confess it was a sorry sight by the time she returned to find that the door of her wardrobe was a prop for my make-shift spray booth. That the entire floor was littered with metal fillings from drilling multiple holes in the rotor hub. Half the space on the king-size bed was covered with tools, and other equipment. I moved the jig from the balcony to the bedroom.

To cut a long story short – the pressure was on to hook up the turbine and hoist it on the roof, while I start the second phase and test the turbine.

Putting it on the roof was exciting…. I couldn’t help but wonder if it would spin or not. Though I could feel the cool breeze, I knew it was not as fast or focused like the electric fan I used to test the turbine in the house. I ran the line down to my flat 2 floors down allowing enough slack to ensure I can cut (if the wire twist around its axis) the wire to fix a plug to routinely unwind the twist.

Just as the final bolts where being tightened, the turbine caught the wind and like they say the rest is history…

I will put up a video of the turbine flying as soon as I can upload one on u-tube. But I was such a pleasure to watch people stare at the alian object on my roof as the walked by. I gave me so much satisfaction to see the smile on their faces - that suggested this house hold has gone "green". Eventhough I was yet to rig it up to the grid, I was humbled that with the help of the internet, I too could cut down on use fossil fuel and save the ozone.

As soon as I finish the volts up option to boost the output current, I can officially say - Phase 2 over!

“Gear Up” or “Volt Up”

While testing the motor on a bench, I soon realized that the motor outputs an average of about 9 volts. 3 volts shy of the recommended charge voltage. To my mind, there were two solutions I could employ. One mechanical and the other electronic. The two options were bound to work, but one was easy, and the other wasn’t.

Gear Up
The first option, the mechanical one was to employ gears to speed the motor. Reading up the topic showed that gears were not recommended for small turbines. It was crude at best, and when it worked, it was noisy and heavy. These were problems I was willing to live with as long as it worked. In its simplest form, it required two gears. I found a motor cycle clutch gear for a measly N800 ($5). And put them to work.

I assembled the two gears on a sheet of white paper. I pressed this against a platform to create an impression on the paper. I then proceeded to design my assembly around this trace.

A trip to the “Turner” (metal works ) resulted in the complete assembly below. All that is left now is to grease it up and bolt it on the motor.

But that was not to be, as I realized that the gear was much too stiff, and required a significant amount of force to set it rolling. I doubt that the cool breeze of Garki could force that hard. I should have employed ball bearings to ensure that everything was at the right angles, perhaps, I might have been able to pull of the mechanical option.

The Mount and Brackets

I have been writing about the epileptic power distribution and generation in Nigeria and how I built my home made wind turbine to supply 3500watts (>2 horse power) to my home in Abuja. I stumbled on a note on the internet about a government project (http://www.windfair.net/press/4068.html) in Katsina aimed at harnessing wind energy for local communities. Nice to know that Government has caught on – I have also noticed uncountable solar street lights in various Nigerian towns and wish them luck on their project. We have seen how to make the blades, also how I put the motor together. Now, we will see how I built the mount, mast and brackets.

The Mount and Brackets
One of the questions on ….. blog was how he managed the line. I came up with a brilliant design that would ensure that the line did not tangle or obstruct the swinging of tail boom. The design employed the use of a small ball bearing on which a tube was sandwiched between the alternator mount and the horizontal pole.

Since I have no metal work skills or experience, I had to turn to the experts. Again, nomenclature would rare its ugly head. I asked everyone to refer me to competent metal workers that could machine parts; no handy man in Nigeria knew what I meant. I tried welders, black smiths to no avail. Then just by share luck, I stumbled upon a mechanic who had just fabricated a vehicle AC bracket. He was the one who gave me the local name for metal workers – they are called “Turners” (because of their spinning tools like bench drills, CNC, etc). So if you need to fabricate any metal, be sure to ask for a “Turner”.

The drawing above shows how my turbine is mounted and this mount cleverly conceals the wires from the turbine inside the mast to the house.

If you are interested in making professional looking 3D drawings like this, use Google Sketch - quite intuitive.

The Alternator and Hub

I have been writing about the epileptic power distribution and generation in Nigeria and how I built my home made wind turbine to supply 3500watts (>2 horse power) to my home in Abuja. I stumbled on a note on the internet about a government project (http://www.windfair.net/press/4068.html) in Katsina aimed at harnessing wind energy for local communities. Nice to know that Government has caught on – I have also noticed uncountable solar street lights in various Nigerian towns and wish them luck on their project. We have seen how to make the blades, so I will go to the motor:-
The Alternator
I spent days on end at Deide (a suburb of Abuja) Pantaka looking for PMC Alternators that were light enough to haul up in the air, and most importantly drive at least 12 volts on a low RPM. Due the poor electric power generation in the country, there were large alternators to be found everywhere, these would serve well for a large wind turbines but not the tiny one I plan to build. I checked on ebay for turbine generators, but considered my rules, I decided against importing a wind generator on eBay. I eventually found a 2.5 Horse Power 230 Volts, 4000 RPM motor that looked like it seen better days. After cleaning it up, and changing the carbon brushes, it was good enough to use.

Unfortunately, they couldn’t find a hub to fit the motor when I bought it, so that meant I had to machine a new hub to fight the motor and also hold the wings.



(Update)
My old friends from university all came to visit me over a “private matter”, while we were drinking out, I happened upon a broken down machinery and lo and behold, in it sat a light weight Treadmill motor. Though the motor was not rated, it compared better than the 90 volts one I bought earlier. Luckily this time, there was a fly wheel with a pulley for a 6 track belt drive. Just what I have been looking for.

Picture of the new motor
The Hub
I had initially fabricated a pulley for the first motor, but it rattled and vibrated dangerously when I fitted the blades and ran the motor with the aid of an electric fan.

The vibration was due to miscalculated angles for the blades. The three blades were meant to be at a 120 degree intervals, but my over enthusiastic “Turners” drilled the hole by sight. I guess nobody taught them the rule – measure twice and cut once! From now on, I must be present while all my job is done.

I also noticed that the blades weighted significantly different from each other. So i had to plane-off each blade to bring them all to the same weight. They now all weigh a little over 7kg each.



At first I didn’t want to start from scratch, so I tried to fill and drill the six holes at the right angle again. But after buying the second motor with a flywheel, I went ahead to drill the new hub.



(Update)
Show picture of the new hub with holes

Phase 2 - Buying and Fabricating the Parts

Phase 2 – Buying and Fabricating the Parts
If you have been following my post on how to building a cheap wind turbine to support an existing power inverter, you would know that though an off the shelve model will set you back over $3,000 but with locally assessable materials and not so much DIY skills you can build one for yourself.
I have written about the design and concept at http://tantiblo.blogspot.com/2009/08/phase-1-designing-turbine.html Lets now focus on buying the stuff we need. In the west, one could have walked into Home depot, Curries, or other local DIY or hubby shops, but in Naija – I had to go to the open market.

The Blades
The first and perhaps easiest parts to fabricate are the blades. Following the blueprint I saw at http://www.yourgreendream.com/diy_pvc_blades.php,









Since the pipe wasn’t brand new, the rim was not cut at the right angle - nut tied to a string from the rim, like a plumb and traced the string to get a perfect vertical straight line. Positioning a laser level at the right angle (90 degree) to get my bearings. I cut the four blades with a jigsaw.








I then sanded each blade down with a belt sander and extra smoth sand paper. I sprayed on a matte white finish to make them more presentable.

After cutting the parts out I shaped it with a belt sander, flat file and smooth sand papers, ensuring that all blades not only look alike, but weight the same. This will ensure that the turbine does not vibrate itself to smithereens.

Phase 1 – Designing the Turbine

The Concept Holistically, my plan was to harness the energy of the wind to generate between 10 – 15volts DC to charge two 12volts 200m Amps Deep cycle batteries which will in turn power my inverter. On a more detailed level, the logic of the entire system would be to regulate the erratic current supplied by an alternator to a more tolerable band, and feed the current to a bank of batteries, ensuring that as soon as the battery is topped up, the current is diverted to prevent the batteries from frying. Simple as this plan sounds, it will be fraught with challenges that I hope to share with you on my blog http://tantiblo.blogspot.com/ .

Hold The Power For As Long As You Like (Part 3)

The Solution

Like most solutions, start by Googling up the topic. It wasn’t long before I realized that some people had had their hands on this already, and it looked like they all came away with a relative margin of success. But by and large, I learnt that there was no need to reinvent the wheel. They had already drawn up a blueprint of some of the major components to fabricate a wind turbine.

One of the first thing to consider when building a wind turbine is to ascertain how windy the target location is – for those in the west, there is a chart of average wind speed in different areas in the USA and even in the UK – I guess they use this for air navigation data (several private pilots, and wind-sports related enthusiasts) but in Naija where our past presidents insist that Nigeria has no business in space, no such chart exists. In the absence of this data, I used common sense - as a rule of thumb; coastal cities are generally windier than landlocked cities. Rural areas are generally windier than built up locations.

coastal cities are generally windier than landlocked cities. Rural areas are generally windier than built up locations.

This rule clearly put me at a disadvantage, Abuja is land locked, and built up – but I figured that if I put my turbine high up on the roof of a 3 – 4 storey building, I should catch the “Gulf Steam”. (or so I thought)

I started out with a short shopping list of a few items
• Motor Alternator
• Bicycle Speed Meter (wired)
• Hub for the rotor blades
• PVC Pipes
• 5 Core Wire (one roll)
• Mount Pipes and brackets
• Nuts, Screws, Washers and Bolts

The projects I saw on the internet had shopping list of items one could easily find at your local DIY, home improvement shop, but for three reasons I had to look elsewhere – My rules;
1. Here in Nigeria, there were no hobby shops to run to.
2. I was not willing to waste money. I was going to salvage items and make do with whatever I can find that fits the bill.
3. Will only resort to buying new of off-shore items if and only if, I am unable to get one locally

I turned to junk yard to find my parts – finding a junk yard was more difficult than I first thought. Until I learnt that our people had their own name for it. Its called “Panteka” (from the sentence “Pan Taker” – people who collect pans). Hilarious! Finding Pantakas was much easier.

... more tomorrow.

Hold The Power For As Long As You Like!! (Part 2)

This is a continuation of my last post on the epileptic power problem in Nigeria.

In 2007, I invested in an Inverter. I bought a 3.5 KVA Sukam Inverter http://www.blogger.com/www.sukam.com. It set me back almost N300,000 (about $1,986) for the unit, four deep cycle batteries, and the rewiring of my home. I consider it the best thing I have ever bought. It provides an uninterrupted clean (pure sine wave) power supply to my home, augmenting the epileptic local power utility and it us devoid of all the nuisance of noise, fire hazards of storing combustible gasoline or diesel in my home, cost ofuel, increasing my carbon footprint, etc. …that a generating set would create. To cap it all, it is designed to run unattended. So if the power fails at 3:00am, I will not wake up in a pool of sweat – as the Inverter would kick-in and also switch off when the power returns. Stress free you say? …Not quite.

Okay I will cut to the chase. When fully charged, the inverter supplied power for upwards of 8 hours (depending on what was powered on), so my only problem was that I needed about 3 - 4 hours of constant electric power supply from the grid to recharge my battery bank. But with the power holding company (PHCN – Please Have Candles Nearby) supplying less and less power everyday, I was forced to think up a solution fast. Since I live in sunny Abuja in the heart of Africa, the most obvious solution would be to buy solar cells and have the sun recharge my batteries during the day – but you would be surprised how much those things cost. A cheap solar panel would set you back N70,000 (about $463) and I needed about 4 – 8 to do the work. In these hard times, who wants to throw that kind of money at such a problem, so I had to look for another alternative.

I knew that a wind turbine would also do the honors, but at $3,000 they are not cheap too, but unlike the solar cells they were relatively easy to make – so I made one. I will spend sometime on this blog to explain how I built the above turbine for less than N30,000 ($x). I will do it in 5 phases:-

1. Phase 1 – Designing the turbine
2. Phase 2 - Buying and fabricating the parts
3. Phase 3 – Testing the turbine
4. Phase 4 - Hooking it up to the grid
5. Phase 5 - Lessons Learnt

Enjoy. See a video of its first flight...

Hold The Power For As Long As You Like!!! Part 1

The Problem
Our sole power utility company has struggled over the years to provide constant electric power but have failed woefully. Nigeria Electric Power Authority (NEPA) generated and distributed electricity through few hydro-electric dams scattered around the country. Like most government run outfits, NEPA could hardly meet the demands of the people, with poor management, its dilapidated infrastructure and an ever increasing demand by the populace, all indices pointed southwards…and it came to be referred to as NEPA - Never Expect Power Always.

Government has recognized the fact that power (amongst others things) was the main problem that has hindered technological development in the country. Power accounts for a huge chunk of expenses of every business in the country and adds to the cost of the product or service. Even small scale businesses are not exempt from the problem. When communication service providers were asked to lower their tariff, they sighted power provision as the main reason why Nigerians pay the highest tariff in the world.

This problem is further compounded by the cost of refined petroleum products. Though Nigeria is the 5th largest oil producer in the world, we still import refined products. The cause of the problem suggests that no doubt a few people have enriched themselves in the importation of generators, refined oil products and the continued mismanagement of the relevant institutions that should correct these problems. That is a story for another day.

Only recently, NEPA was privatized, reborn and renamed PHCN (Power Holding Company of Nigeria) but like the proverbial old wine in new wine skin, the problems still persist.

Major multinationals like Michelin, Deawoo Motors & Phyzer, have relocated to neighboring countries, in search of more energy. Though government has sunk huge sums of money into the power sector, we are yet to see the results. The administration of Olusegun Obasanjo spent ……billions, with nothing to show for it. The present administration of Musa Yar-adua is prosecuting corrupt administrators of the fund – we are waiting to see the outcome.

CNN once aired “My Favorite Gadget” as a segment of their technology watch program, and their Nigerian bureau fielded their power generation set as their favorite. They spoke my mind, I wonder where we will be without our generators.



Like every other service in Nigeria, you have to solve it yourself. If the water taps don’t run, you sink a bore hole in your house. If the police won’t provide security, you create your own – or consult God or Babalawo (whichever you find more accessible). If the government won’t build your street, you pour gravel, periwinkle shells, stones etc to pave the road. To a large extent I think therein lies our problem as a nation, in the west, people come together (Class act) to force the local authorities to perform. But in Nigeria we say “Leave them!” “God will punish them!!” “Don’t mind them!!!” Our politicians know too well that nobody will stand up to hold them accountable – so the looting continues. You ask “what can we do? “

That’s a story for another day.