Letter of the day

Sir,...I would like to quickly highlight the rational motivations behind this protest. As you are aware, the state of national electricity provision in Nigeria is dismal. The acronym Nepa PLC (as the Power Holding Company of Nigeria was formally known) is locally more often understood to mean "Never Expect Power Again, Please Light Candle."
A vast number of low-income households can afford only a 1kVA generator, which uses petrol, not diesel. This generator has the capacity to run maybe a fan, TV, radio and, perhaps most importantly, a lightbulb, particularly at night. For many of these families, the sudden increase in fuel costs means that this "luxury" is no longer affordable. The government is theefore literally leaving its poorest people in the dark.
This is why the protests must be understood in the context that they are, in some sense, a simple attempt to maintain sanity.
Kartik Kumar
Ikoyi Island
Lagos
Nigeria

Today's FT