Nigeria

Tension Mounts in Lagos Suburb over Blackout This Day (Lagos) April 28, 2000 By Godwin Ifijeh

Lagos - As tension builds up in Oshodi, a Lagos community over the cut off of power supply to the area for two weeks running, elders of the community has said that they could no longer guarantee the security of N.E.P.A. installations in the area.

Monday before the Easter week, N.E.P.A. has cut off power supply to the area, giving no excuse for the action.

The situation got to a point early this week, reliable sources at the Oshodi undertaking office told City Diary that the new undertaking Manager, who is less than two weeks old in the place, threatened to leave the place on transfer.

However, officials of the PTC undertaking office, Ikeja, told City Diary that the problem was both RMU and a cable fault. They said the fault had persisted owing to prolonged sourcing of materials to rectify the fault.

As indications emerged, however, as at press time that power supply might be restored to the area before today, the community still insisted that completely fed up with having to be borrowing power supply from PTC controlled substation under its current female manager, who they claim has been in the place for over six years without change and is ever happy at having Oshodi in darkness, the only thing that could reasonably satisfy them right now is a substation of their own.

They warned NEPA not to do without ensuring that the last two weeks which they did not enjoy power supply is reflected in their April bills as serving them a full month's bill in April would triger off serious crisis between the community and the authority in the area.

But with the situation increasingly becoming embarrassing for both the undertaking and the District office, NEPA officials of the Oshodi and Ikeja district offices have begun trading blames.

Both officials of the Oshodi undertaking office and of the district office Ikeja could not exactly say what the fault was that had thrown the entire community of over two million people into darkness in the last two weeks.

Members of the community said workers of the undertaking office had blamed several things for the problem, resulting in them not knowing what the actual fault is.

"At a time they said the fault was RMU, later they said it was cable fault. We did not know what to take. At another time, they said PTC undertaking office of the Ikeja district, which oversees the Ilupeju substation from where they got the Oshodi express feeder, which feeds the Oshodi community, was not co- operating with them to clear the fault as they had taken the matter lightly, believing that their consumers not directly involved, they had nothing to loose," some of the community elders claimed officials of the Oshodi undertaking office told them.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), April 28, 2000