AREPO, a sprawling community of over 20 estates in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, has petitioned Ikeja Electric (IE) over what it called prolonged outage.
The community said it had been experiencing prolonged outage for over four months, with all efforts to get IE to remedy the situation not yielding results.
Rather, the community said, IE had become fond of restoring and cutting supply for an hour or two on days it liked, without consideration for the consequences of such actions on residents’ electrical appliances.
Arepo is off the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and has a population of over 850,000.
The Journalists’ Estate is within the community.
They are threatening to seek legal redress for damages the residents have suffered so far, the petitioners said the power problem had made life miserable and ruined businesses that could not afford the high cost of fuel.
The community brought the petition under the aegis of the Concerned Residents of Arepo (CRA).
The petition was signed by Kehinde Adeyemo, Friday Erhabor and 26 other residents from all the estates in the community.
In the petition addressed to IE Managing Director, the community said it was not reaping the benefits of its recent upgrade from Band C to B under which it was expected to enjoy a minimum of 16 to 18 hours supply daily.
Complaining that the community had been receiving far less than the stipulated supply in the past four months, the petitioners said: “In the last four months, the residents barely enjoy two hours of light cumulatively per day. Things got so bad that some residents staged a peaceful protest at IE’s corporate headquarters in Ikeja on May 8 to call attention to the situation, but nothing was done by the company”.
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The petitioners recalled that attempts in the past to get IE to address the problem yielded nothing.
They lamented IE’s failure to address the issue as promised, saying: “All promises of immediate redress by your company have yielded no fruits, as residents continue to groan under perpetual darkness, sometimes running into weeks,” they stated.
Moreover, they added that many consumers have not been metered and were still getting estimated billings.
The petitioners said: “We wish to inform and remind your company that contrary to the key mandates under the enabling law, so many residents in Arepo are yet to be metered by Ikeja Electric and are therefore still operating under the old arbitrary estimated billing of the distribution company. This is not only unfair but unjust to the consumers”.
The community asked for immediate improved power supply in line with the service-based tariff arrangement, and the provision of meters to consumers with none.
To address the root cause of the problem, the petitioners also sought the upgrading of the supply feeders, including the Akute feeder and Oke Aro stations, and the rehabilitation of obsolete equipment and transformers known to ‘trip’ frequently, thereby leading to outages.
The petitioners demanded compensation for all lost hours of electricity supply in the last four months, in line with the provisions of the law.
They served IE of legal notice if something meaningful was not done about their complaints.
The petition was copied the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, Forum in Osogbo, Osun State; Lagos State Electricity Regulatory Commission, LASERC, and the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC.
