THE entire Oke-Abiye community in Agbado/Oke-Odo Local Council Development Area (LCDA), Lagos State was literally shut down last Monday, as residents took to the streets to protest what they termed inefficient service delivery from the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC).

They issued a stern warning to the IKEDC, to urgently stop the issuance of electricity bills that do not reflect actual energy consumption; to install energy meter at their substations; and to subsequently install prepaid meters to all consumers, to save them the rip-off of paying for energy not supplied.

The protesters, who displayed placards with various inscriptions, unanimously rejected the “unscrupulous and outrageous bills served customers under the network of Oke-Abiye substations.”

According to the Community Development Association (CDA) Chairman, Akeem Balogun, deficiency in service delivery by IKEDC has brought economic and social activities of the community to a halt, causing massive migration of tenants and relocation of landlords, due to losses incurred in their businesses.

A month has 744 hours, and these Oke-Abiye substations had always been supplied with energy on cumulative aggregate of 68-97 hours, but customers were issued electricity bills of 744 hours. This is viewed as extortion of highest order and gross violation of customers’ rights.
“Our community has been facing serious security challenges, as there have been frequent threat to lives and properties by men of the underworld. Residents are being forced to live with psychological and mental torture,” he said.

Balogun warned that all the conditions must be urgently met by the IKEDC; else they should expect a showdown that would paralyse their activities.

The community leader of the town, High Chief Najeem Ajolojuota, who also rued the development said since the community came into existence 40 years ago, all the electricity mechanisms put in place were through self-help.

He noted that when electricity supply became worse, he summoned a meeting with the electricity officials, where N10, 000 stipend was agreed to be paid officials in charge of the area. He said for six months, they had constant power supply but immediately they stopped the stipend, “we’ve been experiencing irregular power supply, its usually only five days to when they’ll be bringing monthly bills that we’ll be given regular power supply.

In October, they gave us outrageous bills, which we rejected in totality. Due to our rejection of the bills, what they gave us for November was moderate. Imagine a building of four rooms being charged N53, 000. We are crying out so that IKEDC will stop this heinous practice.

Also, the Seriki of the community, Chief Ariwoola Sarafadeen, said, “We don’t want to continue paying for what we don’t consume. If we consume 20 units of light and we are paying for 550 units that is not good enough. We hate cheating and we’ll protest with everything we have. We are not violent but when it comes to agitating for our rights we’ll always fight for our rights. We want IKEDC to change all our wooden poles to concrete; also we need energy meter that would read our consumption to be placed on the transformer, to avoid paying for what we didn’t consume.”