Blackout: Ikosi residents block gate of Ikeja Electric

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Residents of Ikosi, in Kosofe Local Government Area, Lagos, on Wednesday blocked the main entrance of Ikeja Electric (IE), Ikeja, protesting over two months of power outage in their area.

The protesters, who came in their hundreds, chanted songs to drive home their grievances and prevented officials of the company and other consumers from entering the premises.

They carried placards with different inscriptions such as “All we are saying, give us supply“ and “What is our offence that IE refuses to give us electricity supply?’’

Mr Omotayo Lamidi, President, Taike Landlord Association, Aribigbe Zone, Ikosi Ketu, who led the protesters, said that their community had been in darkness for over two months.

“Despite this darkness, the company continues to bring outrageous bill to us.

“We are here to show them that we are not satisfied with their services and show our grievance.

“We will no longer tolerate outrageous billings and the management should please fix our supply,” he said.

Mr Sola Ilori, one of the protesters, who is an artisan in the area, said the outage had succeeded in making many of his colleagues idle.

Ilori said life in Ikosi was unbearable due to the continual outage, urging the company to restore electricity supply to the area.

Responding to the protesters, Mr Agboola Ayeni, Director, Corporate Communications of IE, apologised for the poor power supply.

Ayeni said that the outage was due to a drop in energy allocation to the company from the National Grid.

He said that the company was receiving just 250 megawatts instead of 1250mw needed to give consumers within the network regular power supply.

The director said that staff of the company would go round the community and see what could be done to increase the power supply to the area.

He appealed to the protesters on the issue of prepaid meters, explaining that they had a mode of installing the meters gradually.

Ayeni said that the installation would have reached them, but for the challenges the company was facing due to non-availability of foreign exchange.

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