Ebun Olowu
Resident of Apete Area of Ibadan, capital of Oyo State today took to the street to protest against series of economic nefarious activities of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC), calling on the Federal Government to disconnect the entire area from the national grid.
The protesters were armed with series of placards of different colours with different inscriptions including, “IBEDC: Stop crazy bills”, “We don’t want IBEDC light again, FG. come and disconnect us”, “IBEDC give us light”, “IBEDC, we are sweating too much in Apete”, “IBEDC is cheating us”, “IBEDC only give us light for two hours in the night”, “Bad road, bad electricity”, “IBEDC is wicked”, “IBEDC only collect money, they don’t give light”, “IBEDC don’t maintain installation, don’t buy transformers, but collect money every month”, “IBEDC violates FG law on electricity”, “IBEDC is full of sharp practices”, etc.
In unison, the protesters were shouting, “IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go! IBEDC go!…. We do not want government electricity again. There is no light, light is bad, our road is bad. Federal Government come and disconnect us from your grid”.
According to the protesting residents, IBEDC will give the community light for about five minutes in the day time and switch it off, for it to bring it for about less than three hours in the night.
Speaking with the press, the President of Awotan Community Development, Babaayo Rasaq, described the electricity situation of the community as pathetic, stressing that residents without pre-paid meters, who are not less than two third suffer and are being reaped-off of their hard earn income.
“Despite the fact that we don’t have light here, the company brings N8,000 bill monthly for the houses without pre-paid meter”, he added.
Rasaq said, “The light situation in this area is very very bad. We have lots of issues. IBEDC do not maintain its installation in this community. We have been talking to IBEDC. We have even written many letters to the company and none of these letters were replied to, not to talk of acting on them. From Apete to Akufo, to Aroro and the remaining communities around, there is no electricity. After series of pressure and agitation, they are giving us between three to four hours in a day and it is in the night this few hours of electricity will be brought. They will bring it in the night, when it is not economically useful”.
He stated. “Another issue is that Apete, Awotan, Ajibode and Akufo, which have more than 100 transformers, are on one feeder. We have about three feeders in this area. One feeder goes to LIFORTE School alone. LIFORTE that is having only two transformers has a whole feeder to itself and communities with over 100 transformers are on just one feeder. IBEDC’s complaint is that the feeder is too long. If there is a problem, they may not locate the fault in two weeks. These are the problem we are facing and at the end of every month, they bring exorbitant bills. They are doing this even after the Federal Government made a law that estimated bill must not be more than N1000 per month. We agitated for transformer, they came, they promised and nothing happened. I can tell you that not more than one third of this community is having pre-paid metres. They are not using black meters again. The digital meter, they are not counting it again. Either they give us light or not, they collect money. Even, we have letter with NERC now, but they did not reply us”.
He appealed, “We are begging the Federal Government, we don’t want all this again and we want them to disconnect us from the national grid. We have decided to be using generators because we are not getting value for the money we are paying. We don’t have control over this problem. It is like Federal Government is making law at Abuja, which IBEDC never respect. They always tell us that Federal Government is not serious. IBEDC is cheating too much”.
“Our light is poor, terrible and it is like we are not having light. Look at the artisans, the tailors, the hairdressers, the vulcanisers and the likes, they will not give them light during the day and they will now give us one or two hours or three hours in the night, is this useful to us? No. So we don’t want the light again”, he concluded.
