It has been ten days since households and businesses at Ori-Okuta, Shiriki and some other neighbourhoods in the Ikorodu of Lagos State were plunged into a power blackout.
Residents of these neighbourhoods complain power has not been restored. These are service areas under the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC), known as Ikeja Electric (IE).
The areas were hit with power interruption in the early hours of January 18 and residents initially thought it was the usual intermittent service that the IKEDC was known to provide for them.
“Sleeping at night has not been smooth for me because of heat. Aside from that, if I need cold drinks I would have to walk some 1000 metres or even more before I could be able to buy it,” said Adisa Akinwale, a resident of Shiriki Street, on Tuesday.
“I had a hectic time looking for somewhere to buy some sachets of water on Sunday. Many shops were closed across the road. Meanwhile, I could have bought it beside my house if there was power supply. That was just a single experience from me. So many people are having a bad time they may not speak about because of this outage.”
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What they thought would be a power cut lasting a few hours has graduated into days and each passing day only promises uncertainty.
Tiamiyu Tunde, a member of Shiriki Community Development Association, told FIJ on Monday that the affected streets had sent a team to interface with the power supplier about the problem.
“Our representatives have been visiting their offices in different locations to lodge my bitter complaints and see how they want to address it without further delay,” Tunde said.
“I was not part of the team. But as a leader on my street, I have been forwarding every feedback we get from the general team to our platform. The last feedback they gave us was that the issue will be fixed before Thursday.”
FIJ understands that Owoso Ademola, an employee of the company, had told the community leaders at the company’s Owutu office that there was no hope in sight for restoring power to the areas.
“We have made efforts by visiting the Owutu Undertaking, where one Engineer Owoso Ademola told us that there is no hope to restore power to our community, this statement made us move to their head office at Alogba in Igbogbo,” a report by the community team that visited the company on Monday read.
“Everyone we have spoken to said the problem can only be handled by their headquarters. In line with this, we are writing a letter and mobilising our members to their Alausa headquarters to express our pain.
“It is very unfortunate that Ikeja Electric will take its customers for granted. No light since January 18 and we are being told that there is no hope in sight.”
FIJ also learnt that the situation was caused by the tripping off of the circuit breaker of a transformer supplying electricity to these areas.
A group photo taken by the community reps with some maintenance officers at the company on Monday.
On Monday, some residents met with the representatives of the electricity provider at its Owutu office again. The company gave a Thursday deadline to get power restored.
“The company has assigned a maintenance team from its headquarters to replace the circuit breaker and fix other technical problems with the transformer,” a report of the visit obtained by FIJ read
“We were assured by the head of the Owutu Undertaking that power will be restored to the entire community unfailingly by Thursday.”
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The disruption has impacted the residents in their individual lives differently. Small businesses and hospitals relying on electricity to attend to customers and provide healthcare services have been significantly impacted.
Residents struggle to pay for IKEDC’s services and never expect such services not to be rendered. The power provider still charges some of its unmetered customers by an estimated billing system, an unfair system that allows the company to simply charge customers at its discretion rather than using actual energy consumption.
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