Dnako residents in darkness despite spending N1.1m on transformer

Residents of Dnako, a community in Bwari Area Council of the FCT, Abuja, have been in blackout for more than two years after the transformer in the community got faulty. Since 2015 they have expended N1.1 million on the transformer. They said the money was realised through donations and contributions from every household. They however […]

Residents of Dnako, a community in Bwari Area Council of the FCT, Abuja, have been in blackout for more than two years after the transformer in the community got faulty.

Since 2015 they have expended N1.1 million on the transformer. They said the money was realised through donations and contributions from every household. They however lamented that they remain frustrated that after contributing that much, they could not get the transformer working. They said they had written several letters to and visited  the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) in Bwari on many occasions but they were yet to get respite. 

The situation, residents said, had crippled business activities and ruined the development of the community.

The community head, Yuda Garba, said if the community had not been in blackout for the past two years, business activities would have improved thereby benefitting several households. Such gains, he said, stood to better the community in the long run as more people, including businessmen,  would be attracted to the community. Instead, he said, they spent exorbitant amounts on fuel to pump water and depended on neighbouring communities to meet some needs and could not do some businesses like welding.

“If there is light, there will be improvement in our lives. It means more water at low cost. More visitors will come to the community and businesses will improve,” he said.

He further said the residents now resorted to local lamps while they relied on few people with generators to charge their handsets. He said some businesses had crumbled as several small scale business people opted for other means of livelihood, including farming.

“It has not been easy to be without electricity. Now we can only manage the situation. We use generators to charge our phones.  It is the condition we have found ourselves in and we have to adapt to it,” Shedrack Yuda, the chief’s son said.

He said most of the residents were disappointed to be without electricity after contributing N5, 000 in an attempt to fix the transformer, adding that probably the situation would have been different if the community had an illustrious son in position of authority.

He said the silence of the AEDC and government despite several letters and visits showed their lack of concern over their plight.

While they were making efforts to repair the transformer, vandals were also removing the cables while termites and insects feasted on the wooden poles. Some of the poles have fallen while cables litter the dusty road to the community.

“Now we will need more than a transformer to have electricity in this community because after the transformer spoiled, some poles started falling. One day some people cut some cables and were about taking it away before we caught them,” Yuda said.

Yuda said some youths had been mobilised to guard the remaining electricity infrastructure in the community, adding that the transformer was still with an engineer at Peyi, also a community in Bwari Area Council.

He said the engineer last requested for N200, 000 to fill the mercury and that more money would be needed before the transformer could be functional.

Lack of electricity is just one of the social amenities lacking in the community. A cross section of the people said they still fetched water from the stream.

When our reporters got to the community, few kilometres from Gaba, several women were gathered around a generator as if celebrating a feast: instead they were waiting for the drillers to finish and allow them fetch from the new borehole.

The women, carrying several sizes of bowls, struggled to collect the brown water the drilling machine gushed.

“We have about six boreholes in this community but only one is working which cannot serve the many residents here,” Garba, the community head, tried defending the women. He was overjoyed that he could not tell if it was a non-governmental organisation or missionaries that donated the borehole.

He said some vandals stole the pumping machine in the borehole at the primary school while the other mechanised boreholes did not last the test of time.

“Only two boreholes are functional and they are not sufficient for everyone living here because nomadic people still depend on the community for water. So if all the faulty boreholes can be repaired, it will be okay,” Yuda said.

“Those people on motorcycle are going to the stream to wash their clothes,” he said pointing to three men with buckets and stacks of  clothes.

He said residents took turns to use the functional boreholes. 

For school, he said their children attended secondary schools in Shere, Kawu or Bwari.

The residents said they were also faced with the challenge of herdsmen, who they said destroyed their farms.

“We wrote to the government that we needed these amenities,” they said.

Yuda said the residents were working with the Community and Social Development Project (CSDP) in tackling some of their challenges.

 

“We were told to open an account with N1m. We are working towards it and with that we can hope to buy a new transformer, get a primary healthcare centre and more boreholes,” he said.