Ibadan Electric decries loss of N250m equipment to hoodlums

…vows not to restore power to community   Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) at the weekend decried loss of over N250 million worth of equipment to the activities of hoodlums in Ilesha, Osun State, and has vowed not to restore power to the community until sensitive pieces of equipment it said the hoodlums destroyed are […]

…vows not to restore power to community

 

Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) at the weekend decried loss of over N250 million worth of equipment to the activities of hoodlums in Ilesha, Osun State, and has vowed not to restore power to the community until sensitive pieces of equipment it said the hoodlums destroyed are replaced.

The company alleged that hundreds of hoodlums armed with dangerous weapons besieged, on March 14 and 18, 2019, its various offices within the town and destroyed its infrastructure, as well as attacked its staff, shooting sporadically into the air to create panic and chaos while their operation lasted.

According to the IBEDC Managing Director, Mr. John Donnachie, though the company had restored power supply to neighbouring towns and villages that are directly connected to the town, power supply to Ilesha town would remain shut down until all the destroyed infrastructures were rehabilitated by the community or state government and safety of lives of the company’s staff was assured.

“We won’t joke with the lives of our staff. We do not know the cogent reasons behind this spate of orchestrated attacks, robberies and assaults on our staff and infrastructure. The night before the attack, there was a heavy downpour with storms across Osun State, which resulted in some faults and invariably culminated in a total outage on the 33KV feeders feeding the whole Ijeshaland. Immediately, the headquarters of our regulator, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), was alerted on the situation. We then temporarily shut down supply to locations under the Ilesha business hub and environs to prevent further damage to lives and property. This is the standard and acceptable practice by the company when we have issues like this,” he said.

At an event in Lagos, Donnachie noted that the distribution company had in  2014 and 2016 experienced similar attacks and it took the intervention of the state governor to restore normalcy. It is becoming apparent that these attacks on IBEDC are deliberate and intentional, which portrays Ilesha as prone to unrests, though we operate in Ogun, Oyo, Kwara and Osun states, and parts of Ekiti, Kogi and Niger states with minimal upheavals,” he said.

The company’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr, John Ayodele, disclosed that after an assessment tour of the affected areas, it had written a letter to the governor of the state.

“While we are requesting the state government and indigenes of Ilesha to financially facilitate the needed repairs and replacement, it will be difficult for the IBEDC to restore electricity supply to Ilesha. IBEDC, as a business, is currently operating at a great loss. Moreover, the Ilesha community is indebted to the company to the tune of N3.7 billion. In consideration of the extensive damage done to the the company’s distribution network infrastructure, especially the Oke-Omiru injection sub-station and the accompanying district facilities, an approximate N240m will be required to revamp and rehabilitate the infrastructure,” Ayodele stated.