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Olamide Babatunde
Residents of Enilolobo in Ifo Ogun State, on the fringes of Iju-Ishaga bordering Lagos State, have cried out to the Minister of Power, Saleh Mamman, over what they termed maltreatment being ceaselessly meted out to them by Ikeja Electric, Abule-Egba Business Unit.
The residents have been in a long-drawn battle with Ikeja Electric over the refusal of the electric company to reconnect them to the national grid after disconnecting them for over three weeks without notice.
They were previously disconnected for three months from June to August this year.
According to them, Ikeja Electric promised, when power was restored to the community in September, that the months they had no electricity would not reflect on their subsequent bills.
“But to our dismay, when they sent us the September bill, not only did they add the months they disconnected us, but had inflated the bills,” Ismail Balogun, chairman of the youth forum of the area said.
The face-off, which has lingered for over three years, started when the residents decried the high electricity bills Ikeja Electric sends to them and demanded they be metered in compliance with government regulations.
But according to them, instead of providing them with the meters, Ikeja Electric resorted to disconnecting them from the national grid without prior notice as per the regulations by National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
“We were due for load shedding. They came with the pretext that they were shedding loads and told us there is a shortage of oil in the transformer and disconnected us. It has been over three weeks now and they have neither come to restore power nor fix the oil they said is short in the transformer,” Balogun said.
In response to the allegations by the community, the Business Manager, Abule-Egba Unit, Oloyede Adelakun, told Daily Sun the community has refused to pay their bills hence he ordered they be disconnected from the national grid.
“About four months ago, I had a meeting with them and they made some requests that I have to carry out some repairs on their network before they can make payments. Right there in their presence, I deployed about 400mm of aluminium conductors to make the necessary repairs and asked them to restore the supply,” he said.
