The ‘Band A’ Betrayal: When Light Became a Luxury Only the Rich Can Afford

My mother called me at 10 PM last night. Not to check on me. Not to ask if I had eaten. She called to whisper into the phone like she was sharing a secret: “They have moved us to Band C.”

I didn’t need her to explain. I knew exactly what she meant. For the past six months, my parents—retired schoolteachers living in a modest three-bedroom bungalow in Ibadan—had been enjoying what the electricity distribution companies call Band A service. That meant 20 hours of power daily. It meant my mother’s dialysis machine could run without fear. It meant my father’s heart medication stayed cold in the fridge. It meant they could sleep with their ceiling fan on during this suffocating heat.

Now, they are back to Band C. Eight hours of light. Maybe. If the stars align and the Disco chairman wakes up on the right side of the bed.

My mother wasn't angry. She was tired. The kind of tired that comes from fighting a system you cannot see and cannot touch. “The bill was too high,” she said. “We couldn’t keep up. So they downgraded us.”

Let me translate. My parents are now considered poor consumers. Not because they stopped paying. But because they could no longer afford the N40,000 monthly electricity bill that came with the privilege of having light. So they have been sent back to the darkness—to the world of dimming bulbs, spoiled tomatoes, and the constant hum of a generator that drinks fuel like a thirsty camel.

This is the Nigeria of 2026. A country where electricity has been sorted into castes. Band A for the rich. Band B for the comfortable. Band C, D, and E for the rest of us who are simply trying not to die.

I am not writing this to explain the technicalities of load shedding or the economics of tariff increases. I am writing this because yesterday, I saw a grown man weep inside a pharmacy. His name is Mr. Okonkwo. He lives in a compound in Ojuelegba. His five-year-old daughter has asthma. Her nebulizer requires electricity. The power had been out for 12 hours. His small generator ran out of fuel at midnight. By morning, his little girl was struggling to breathe. He had to borrow money from three different neighbors to buy fuel from a black market seller charging N1,500 per liter.

“They said I am in Band D,” he told me, wiping his face with a rag. “I don’t even know what that means. I only know my daughter almost died.”

That is the gap between the policy paper and the pavement. The people who sit in glass towers and design these band classifications have never watched a child gasp for air because a prepaid meter ran out of units. They have never watched a small business owner lose N200,000 worth of frozen meat because NEPA decided to take “system stability” seriously for 72 hours straight.

We have been sold a lie. The lie is that efficient pricing will bring better service. But here we are, paying some of the highest electricity tariffs in Africa, and still, the light goes out during a Champions League match. Still, the transformer explodes every time it rains. Still, the estimated billing phantom keeps inventing numbers that have no relationship to the bulbs in our homes.

I walked past a Band A neighborhood last week. It is a gated estate less than three kilometers from my own street. The difference was visible from the gate. The streets were lit. The air conditioners hummed from every window. Children played outside at 9 PM because the mosquitoes were kept away by the floodlights. Inside that estate, life makes sense. The refrigerator stays cold. The remote control works. The internet never blinks.

Outside that gate, my street is a dark tunnel. We have learned to cook before 6 PM because after that, we cannot see. We have learned to charge our phones at the corner shop that runs a small generator. We have learned to sleep with wet towels on our chests because the fan refuses to spin.

We have learned to live like refugees in our own homes.

And the government wonders why people are angry. Why the Japa wave continues. Why young people say “this country cannot kill me.” It is not politics. It is not ethnicity. It is the simple, brutal fact that a man cannot even guarantee that his child will have light to study for an exam the next day.

I do not have a Ph.D. in power systems. I do not know how to fix the national grid. But I know this: classifying citizens into bands of darkness is not a solution. It is an admission of failure. It is the government saying, “We cannot give everyone light, so we will give light only to those who can outbid their neighbors.”

That is not a utility. That is an auction. And the poor are losing every time.

Tonight, my mother will light a candle. She will sit in her living room, fanning herself with a folded newspaper, and she will wait for the power to return. She will not complain. She has raised five children; she knows how to endure.

But I am tired of endurance. I am tired of a country where even the light has become a luxury. I am tired of watching good people pay for a service and receive darkness in return.

Band A. Band B. Band C. Call it whatever you like. But do not call it progress.

— By Emeruo Deborah Oghenetejiri a citizen sitting in the dark, waiting for a change that should have come long ago.