The Editor
Hundreds of women residing in Ifesowapo, Irewolede and Ifesokan communities of Imowo Nla in Ikorodu Local Government Area of Lagos State on Tuesday staged a peaceful protest over what they described as “prolonged total blackout” in their communities.
The protesters converged on the Omitoro, Ikorodu Business District office of Ikeja Electric, barricading the entrance to the operational office, locked up the gates and prevented movement in and out of the premises for several hours.
Carrying placards with various inscriptions, including, “IKEDC! Give us our transformer”, “Prolonged blackout: Enough is enough”, “IKEDC, restore our light”, “Our businesses are suffering due to blackout”, “We want our transformer back and working”, among others.
The women, who commenced the protest on Monday, lamented the hardship the prolonged outage had imposed on them, including paralysing both commercial and economic activities in the area.
They stated that the blackout began several months ago after the only transformer serving the communities developed a fault and was taken away by the IKEDC without replacement.
According to the residents, several attempts to engage officials of the distribution company had yielded no tangible results as they remained evasive.
One of the women, Bisi Oluwo, accused the company of insincerity, saying the peaceful demonstration became inevitable after weeks of unfulfilled promises.
She stated, “Before we came out to protest, the CDAs had several interfaces with officials of Ikeja Electric so that we could have our transformer which they took away fixed or replaced, but nothing was done. What they did is to pay lip service to our plight.
“At this point, we told ourselves that enough is enough. Our businesses and means of livelihood have collapsed, economic and commercial activities have grounded because of the situation. The few privileged ones among us who can afford fuel for their generators are doing so at a huge cost.”
She added that artisans, traders and small business owners in the affected communities had suffered severe losses, while households struggled with the rising cost of fueling generators amid the outage.
During the protest, some officials of the Ikeja Electric attempted to address the crowd, but the women insisted on the assurance that transformer would be given to them.
Although, some policemen arrived the scene in their patrol van, but the women remained adamant, insisting on getting their transformer back.
However, a senior officer of the company, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press, later addressed the aggrieved women from the balcony.
He explained that repairing or replacing a faulty transformer required adherence to laid-down procedures, which he said could be time-consuming.
He, however, urged the women to nominate three members who would be interfacing with the Ikeja Electric and give feedbacks to the community, but the women insisted on getting their transformer back.
Efforts to get the reactions of the Head of Corporate Communications of Ikeja Electric, Kingsley Okotie, proved abortive as calls to his telephone line were not answered and messages to his WhatsApp were read, but not responded to.
Calm was restored when police officers from Igbogbo later arrived the scene where they prevailed on the protesting women to open the gate of the Ikeja Electric office.
The women were assured by the IE officials, in the presence of police officees that their transformer would be repaired and brought to the community within two weeks.
