When the Lights Came On: How Electricity Rewired a School – and a Community

“People love staying where there is electricity.” – Mr. Adegoke

When Mr Adegoke was posted to a school in Olokoto community two years ago, he found something that surprised him: the school had been closed. Two years on, it is open again – and the reason he keeps coming back is simple and human: electricity.

That sentence – “people love staying where there is electricity” – is small, honest, and quietly progressive. It’s not just about light bulbs or lower bills. In his storytelling, there’s a thread that is often overlooked in tidy “solar saves the day” headlines: electricity is an infrastructural nudge that changes everyday choices, dignity, and possibility.

Teachers come back – and stay

One immediate ripple Mr. Adegoke noticed was staff movement. Teachers who had left were returning. Why? Because electricity changes the calculus of living and working in a place. 

“It has also brought some teachers back, even some of the teachers that had been transferred to other schools came back because of the electricity,” Adegoke explains.

Reliable power means you can charge a phone, iron a uniform, keep a small fridge, study at night – practical things that make rural postings less punishing and more sustainable. Retaining teachers is more than HR; it’s a quality-of-education intervention. When educators stay, continuity improves, relationships with students deepen, and the curriculum stops being a task to survive and becomes work with pride.

Students show up differently

Mr. Adegoke contrasts students from his previous posting – “situated in a village” with little exposure – with those here. 

“When I came here where there is electricity, our students are different… because they are exposed to some things,” he recalls.

The changes are concrete: students dress better, iron their uniforms, and charge phones. But beneath those gestures is something larger. Clothes and charged phones are signals: of belonging, of access, of being part of a wider conversation. When a student irons a uniform, they show up ready to be seen. When they charge a phone, they carry a tiny window to the world — lessons, news, exams, role models.

That access to information and exposure subtly shifts behaviour. It opens pathways: staying after class to read under a lamp; using a phone to look up a concept a teacher mentioned; following a tradesperson or role model online. Exposure doesn’t guarantee success, but it rearranges the inputs – making aspiration a livable thing instead of a distant idea.

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A subtle infrastructure of aspiration

What Mr. Adegoke describes is a scaffolding of small things adding up: retention of staff, more engaged students, less isolated households. None of it is miraculous, but together it creates conditions where better choices and opportunities can be made. Energy access doesn’t just power devices; it powers routines, relationships, and imagination.

A simple question to carry forward

If electricity nudges teachers back and helps students show up as learners and citizens, how might we design education and community programs that intentionally use that light? Evening tutoring under community lamps, digital literacy sessions that start with the phones students already have, or mentorship hours scheduled after sundown — these are low-cost ways to turn a technical fix into human futures.

Mr. Adegoke’s closing note is nearly poetic in its plainness: he spends more time at the school now; sometimes they even enjoy the electricity more than the city he came from. That line flips assumptions. Energy access isn’t only about catching up with urban comforts — it can be the quiet engine of a town’s new rhythms, ambitions, and everyday dignity.