Nigeria is a west African nation that has an epileptic power supply which has affected the nation for decades. It has gone so deep that it has become an embarrassing challenge that has ranged from one generation to another.
This challenge keeps going forth and back with proposed policies and strategies not yielding the desired results, the power supply is not yet 24hours and the tariff keeps going up and down.
This challenge which has lasted for decades gave rise to mass importation of power generators of all kinds to help Nigerians provide power to their various homes since the power sector are not living up to their expectations.
As the influx of these generators need serious maintenance to keep them working efficiently, this has given rise to skilled workers on generator repairs. Are these generator technicians well trained or half baked? This question remains the inspiration behind this article.
Almost every street in Nigeria has one or two generator technicians who are rendering services to citizens but we have observed a great dissatisfaction and lack of trust by the Nigerian citizens towards these generator technicians.
We see customers monitoring these generator technicians during repairs to avoid the removal of original parts and replacing them with fake ones. Complains of generators developing new faults after correcting the initial fault, deliberate increase on the cost of generator parts etc. All these attitudes boil down to lack of trust from the citizens which centers on if these technicians were properly trained.
How are most of these generator technicians trained? Are they trained by expert professionals from generator companies? Because we have discovered many of these generator technicians were trained by half-baked road side repairers who probably learnt from observation. This has led to many complains as seen from customers towards these quack technicians due to their unprofessional services.
In all sincerity, we have well trained generator engineers and technicians in Nigeria and most of them got direct training from experts working with generator companies like John Holt, Mikano, Sumec-Firman, Thermocool, Yamaha, Perkins etc.
We have also discovered most of these well trained generator engineers and technicians work in the power/generator departments in multinational companies, banks, factories and Consultant generator servicing companies. You hardly see these well trained technicians on the road side shops though there are exceptions of some who decided to float a servicing workshop.
Upcoming Generator technicians should focus more on getting the professional training from experts so as to acquire the right skills and avoid the trial and error pattern deployed by most of these quack technicians which boils down to lack of trust exhibited by the customers towards them.
We are proposing a suggestion to the professional engineers and technicians in generator repairs in Nigeria to partner with the government or private sector to build a technical empowerment center where generator experts will be contracted for a period of months to professionally train interested youths in this regard. This will curb the incessant increase in quack generator technicians.
Our road side generator technicians should exhibit good customer relations, be truthful and stop taking advantage of their ignorant customers, be accessible on phone at all times, render quality services, follow up on customers to make sure they are satisfied and above all, have the fear of God in them.
Customers can be so frustrated when their generators are not effective due to power outage and when these traits listed above are administered, it helps to build back trust from customers.
