Amanpour Likens Super Bowl Outage to Nigerian Situation...

Christane Amanpour

CNN's Chief International Correspondent and anchor of Amanpour, a nightly foreign affairs programme on CNN International, Christiane Amanpour, on Monday night cynically likened a 35-minute blackout at Super Bowl to a regular feature in Nigeria.

She, however, said her submission was the position of Nigerians who had reacted to the development immediately news of the blackout hit the airwaves by reaching out to the CNN.

As millions of viewers watched Sunday's Super Bowl during the third quarter in New Orleans, the United States, there was a power outage at the Super Dome midway through the game for about 35 minutes. When electricity supply was eventually restored, the Baltimore Ravens defeated the 49ers.

But while Americans reportedly waited 35 minutes for the Super Bowl’s lights to come on, Amanpour, on her show, thought “Nigerians just chuckled,” adding: “They know all too well the problem of power outages: Nigeria has been plagued by rolling blackouts that last hours, sometimes even days.”

Amanpour who rushed to the social media to collate views allegedly from Nigerians on the situation presented the following comments: "Power outage at the Super Bowl on Sunday: Suddenly, Nigeria doesn't look as dark anymore,” tweeted one Nigerian.

"If they had the Super Bowl in Nigeria, the power coming back on would be the real surprise," another tweeted.

Playing back a few seconds of her interview with President Goodluck Jonathan a fortnight ago, where Jonathan said electricity supply was relatively stable in the country, Amanpour claimed an Open Mic opened in Lagos to sample views contradicted the president’s position.

Jonathan had told Amanpour: “That is one area that Nigerians are quite pleased with the government; that commitment to improve power is working.”

But Amanpour said during her programme that many Nigerian viewers later tweeted messages to express their continued frustrations about having to rely on back-up generators for power, hence the Open Mic to ascertain the true situation of things.

In the Open Mic series conducted by CNN after Amanpour’s interview, some people said to be Nigerians, dismissed the president’s claims and insisted they still relied on generators for electricity.

“We left a microphone in a public place and recorded Nigerians expressing their frustrations with their notoriously unreliable power supply,” Amanpour further noted.