Residents of Peace and Unity community in Ado-Odo/Ota Local Government Area of Ogun State have cried to Governor Dapo Abiodun to find a lasting solution to their lack of electricity supply.
The residents lamented that the community, located around Benja, off Iyana Iyesi-Ota, have been in darkness for over 10 months due to the poor condition of their transformer.
Speaking in an interview with the newsmen on Thursday, the Assistant General Secretary of Peace and Unity Community Development Association, Engr Yemi Odude, groaned that landlords in the area had spent over N4million to repair their old 500KVA transformer and set up a power base station, saying all efforts proved abortive.
According to Odude, who also doubles as the Chairman of the Electricity Repair Committee in the community, each of the 45 houses in the area contributed money to fix the ‘ageing’ power transformer.
“We’ve been having some transformer issues when we are a combination of CDAs. Now that we decentralised, we are so minimal, just like 40, 45 house landlords. So, we had to inherit the bad transformer we had been using before, since we were not able to gather enough money to buy a new transformer. We were able to tax ourselves N50,000 each to get a substation up, to get the installation gadgets, hire engineers and all that. We were able to tap in from a high tension. Now we have our substation. We worked on the transformer and it worked for about two months. We have been in the dark for about 10 months now. We are still in the dark as I talk to you,” Odude said.
The community leader expressed concern that most tenants have relocated from the area because of lack of power supply, saying “only landlords are still confined to this area” despite spending over N4million to get the power substation functional from the scratch.
He lamented that the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) was not ready to assist in finding a solution to the poor transformer.
As of now, Odude said the CDA needs up to N3.5million to procure a 300KVA transformer, stressing that “we need help urgently from the governor.”
A resident of the community, Mrs Oluwafunmilayo Olaseni, told the newsmen that, “We want Governor Dapo Abiodun to help us. We can’t continue to be in darkness. We have not had stable supply for the past 13 months, with a little taste of it for just two months.”
Olaseni explained that: “Our small community was forced to break off into three different communities because of the capacity and the policy demand of the central controlling body of the CDAs.
“We all had one transformer serving initially but discovered that we were not going to make any headway if we continued that way due to lots of differences. The communities were split purely on geographical delineation.
“The other two communities that came out of the combined CDA were each more than 120 houses.
“We were 52 houses now reduced to about 45 now. They all have had one way or the other to get themselves transformers and set up their base stations.
“We, on our end, did not have a choice than to pick up the old transformer which we all were using before and repair it for our use.
We needed to task every house with a minimum of 50, 000 each for the building of the substation and every other necessities to power the old transformer to use after nine months of no power supply.
“Now as we speak, we have spent well over N4million to get the base station ready and to repair the old transformer with us.
“We, hereby, seek for your urgent assistance from Governor Dapo Abiodun, to help in getting a new transformer. We have all the connections on ground for the installation and energization of the transformer.”
