Power: Ojota Residents Declare 'No Light No Pay'

Some residents of Ojota, Lagos State, were seen on Tuesday, carrying placards of various inscriptions moving from one street to another while protesting the epileptic power supply in the area.

Some of the placards had inscriptions like: “No light no pay", "Three weeks in total darkness", "We will not pay", "All Ojota residents should stop paying NEPA bill’’ among others.

One of the protesters, who gave his name as Festus Okiyi, told journalist that the move was to stop resident from paying electricity bills until there was regular power supply.  

He said the peaceful protest was to bring to the fore the poor level of electricity supply in the area, which he described as worrisome.

“It is time we take our destiny into our hands. We will no longer tolerate that” Okiyi said. “If the new buyers of the electricity companies cannot improve the supply of light they should stop collecting money from members of the public’’.

Another aggrieved resident, a barber, who gave his name as Muyiwa, complained that he has been spending huge sums of money to fuel his generator, in order to keep the business running.

Muyiwa noted that the last fuel scarcity almost grounded his business as he could not afford to buy fuel.

The streets mostly affected by the outage comprised Roju Avenue, Gbadebo, Olabisi, Ogudu Road, Amao, Ogunletti, Olatunji and Emmanuel.

It will be recalled that a similar protest was carried out by Ilupeju residents, whom also told their neighbours to stop paying electricity bill until there was improvement in supply.

When Ikeja Distribution Zone Public Relations Officer,  Pekun Adeyanju, was contacted, he attributed the situation to the power generation company, saying they had a short fall of supply.

“We don’t generate power; we only distribute what we have. Electricity is not something that we store in a place. Unfortunately we are at the receiving end” Adeyanju said. “We got 328 megawatt instead of 937 megawatt to satisfy the consumers under our zone. We can’t stop people from protesting, but we call for their understanding. We also call for more power generation’’.

Source: Legit.ng