For more than two months, the residents of Federal Low Cost Housing Estate, along Itoikin road, Ikorodu, have been suffering for lack of electricity in the Estate.
Yet, the wicked staff and management of Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) have been bringing crazy bills to more than one thousand residents in the Estate. It was a pathetic story when they came to the estate on March 9, 2017, with their vehicle to disconnect the light, which has been epileptic for sometime now.
However, residents of the estate, majority of them women came out enmasse questioning the rationale of the IKEDC staff in disconnecting their light for not paying their bills when actually for more than two months what they have been getting was not more than 10 – 20 minutes of electricity.
It was a dramatic scene on that day as when there was an encounter between both parties. The publisher of Oriwu Sun, who was present at the scene asked them to maintain peace and told the IKEDC officials to leave the premises to avert blood-shed.
They later went away but surprisingly, they came back with escorts comprising policemen and soldiers and removed the fuse inside the transformer, thereby throwing over four streets in the estate into darkness for three days.
The IKEDC officials, again came back to disconnect the light only for the women to lead massive protests to IKEDC office in Ebute on March 13, 2017. According to a resident, AremoAdeniyi who is a caterer, “I was sitting with my elder brother when I saw the officials entering the estate and I asked them if they wanted to disconnect the light or repair it.”
“And I said that it was not possible to disconnect the light that we don’t use regularly because we all pay our bills regularly and I use few electrical appliances in my room. They usually bring outrageous bills of up to ten thousand naira (N10,000) per month and we don’t enjoy the light”, he stated.
Continuing, AremoAdeniyi said, “For two months, there was no light throughout and they came today and made attempt to disconnect our light but we refused and told them to take their ladder away,” he said.
Another resident, KazeemAbdullahi, who also spoke with Oriwu Sun said, “We have not been enjoying the light at all for the past three years now and they continue to bring crazy bills. When they bring the light around 12:00pm, they will take it around 3:00p.m and that would be the end of light for the day.”
Kazeem also said, “We want prepaid meters so that we would only be paying for whatever we use. Last week (March 9, 2017) they came to this estate and they wanted to disconnect the light and we refused but few hours later, they came back with some soldiers to remove the fuse forcefully.”
Meanwhile, the IKEDC officials who came for disconnection on Monday, March 3, 2017 met stiff resistance from the elderly female residents who came out enmasse to protest against the disconnection.
After they left the community, the residents mobilized themselves and went to the office of the IKEDC at Alogba Estate, Ebute to stage a protest ranging from arbitrary charges, crazy bills to paying for darkness.
At the office, the protesters were received by their manager, who urged them to be patient with the organization and thus assuring them that their grievances would be addressed and every anomalies rectified.