In the last few weeks, residents, business owners and artisans in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, have had to grapple with darkness following the unavailability of power as a result of the fuel scarcity in the country.
Prior to the second week of February when all the offices of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) were sealed off by the Oyo State Government for failing to pay a “N400 million revenue bills and personal income”, the power situation in Ibadan had persisted and was further worsened by the seal-off.
In its response to the seal-off, IBEDC said the state government was owing N450 million for energy supplied to the Oyo State secretariat, housing the Governor’s office, which had not been paid.
The ensuing problem left many residents and business owners in Ibadan in a dilemma and many days of darkness. The issue was resolved a few days later, according to a statement signed on February 10 by the Oyo State Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Temilolu Ashamu and the Chief Operating Officer, IBEDC, John Ayodele.
“The general public is hereby assured of restoration of electricity supply as soon as possible while the two parties shall continue amicable resolution of the issues in the interest of the public, including working together to make electricity meters available for residents of the state,” the statement read.
However, days after the resolution of the issue, the power situation in the city has not improved as residents and business owners still go many days without power supply.
The situation has been further exacerbated by the current fuel scarcity ravaging all parts of the country. Some weeks ago, Nigerians woke up to the news of adulterated Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol.
According to the spokesperson of Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Garba-Deen Muhammed, the adulterated petroleum product contained methanol that was above Nigeria’s specification, and assured that the products were being “isolated and withdrawn from the market, including the loaded trucks in transit.”
NMDPRA also assured that it was working with other industry stakeholders to ensure that there is no lapse in supply of the product nationwide that could degenerate to scarcity of petrol.
“NNPC Ltd and all oil marketing companies have been directed to sustain sufficient distribution of petrol in all retail outlets nationwide.
“Meanwhile, NNPC has intensified efforts at increasing the supply of petrol into the market in order to bridge any unforeseen supply gap,” NMDPRA said.
However, since the discovery of the adulterated product and its subsequent withdrawal from the market, queues have continued to persist at filling stations where petrol is sold while other stations that do not have the product have remained shut, despite assurances by NNPC and NMPDRA of availability of petrol.
Multi-layered effects
The situation also comes with its own attendant increase in the price of petrol. It was observed that a litre of petrol, which previously sold at N165 in filling stations across the city, currently goes for between N200 and N300. This is even as petrol retailers (black marketers) seen around filling stations at Sabo and Mokola areas of Ibadan sell a litre for N350 and above at the peak of the crisis. The rippling effect of this is the almost 100 per cent increase in transportation fares across the city.
Paul Kehinde Erinoso, a civil servant with the Ogun State Government, came into Ibadan from Abeokuta, penultimate Saturday for a conference and was hoping to get some petrol to enable him and his fellow travellers go back to Abeokuta, but at the time he spoke to Nigerian Tribune, he had spent three hours on a long queue in one of the filling stations near Molete area of Ibadan and not anywhere near getting petrol.
Erinoso said the issue was not only peculiar to Ibadan as many parts of Ogun State were grappling with poor power supply as well as fuel scarcity. He said he and his family had resorted to taking public transportation to ease off the burden.
“This situation here since morning has been very tense in the sense that the motorcyclists and tricyclists are the ones being attended to majorly. If four vehicles enter, they may not be attended to in close to 30 minutes. So, I have been on the queue since 12 noon, this is about 3:00pm. The vehicles in front of me are less than 40 but see where I am,” he said.
Mary Ifunanya, a business woman who runs a boutique at Queen Cinema, Ibadan, spends between N33,000 and N35,000 weekly on diesel to power the generating set in her shop from 8am to 8pm daily, to make it attractive to customers.
“Recently, it has gone from bad to worse. You can go a week without electricity and if they even bring it, you will have this on and off thing; they bring it and in 20 minutes time it has gone off and you have to keep turning the generator on and off and it is even bad for the generator as well.
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“This week (penultimate week), I think it was just one day, on Tuesday, that they were bringing it on and off. Then on Wednesday an IBEDC official came and asked if we had paid for our electricity. I complained that they had not been giving us power but at the end of the day they would still bring bill and disconnect us if we failed to pay. That day, I went to pay my electricity bill hoping that they would restore the light but since then till today being Friday, we have not had light,” Ifunanya said.
For Ojo Olasupo, a computer technician at Dugbe market area, it is a double tragedy as he faces epileptic power supply at his shop and darkness at home. Olasupo’s area of residence has not had electric power since December 6, 2021 when the transformer feeding the area blew up. Each house in the area was advised to contribute N40,000 to facilitate the purchase of a new one but with the hardship in the country, the target has not been met.
“They give us epileptic power supply. There are times that they bring high voltage and it burnt all my property in the shop, many laptops were burnt. Uptill date, we are still facing the issue of electricity problems. It is spontaneously paralysing the business because if there is no light, we can’t do anything and when you want to buy fuel we still encounter scarcity of petrol,” Olasupo said.
When Nigerian Tribune entered the shop of a business woman in Molete who deals in soft drinks, sachet and bottled water, a customer who wanted chilled sachet water was walking out of the shop.
The shop owner, who did not want her name in print, rhetorically asked the reporter if she had taken any chilled drink that day when asked why the customer, earlier mentioned, left.
“Since there is no electricity and petrol is scarce, we cannot sell anything cold. It is affecting those who are producing ice block which has also increased the cost of drinks because definitely people will make their gain out of whatever they buy and sell.
“The electricity people also increased their rates and for some time now I have not been able to buy light because I am using a prepaid meter.
“With the fuel scarcity, yesterday and today (penultimate Friday and Saturday) they sold petrol here (at a filling station nearby), I wanted to buy but I couldn’t buy because there was a fight there and a long queue for those that are into transportation and an ordinary person cannot just go there and line up to buy unless you want to be roughened,” she said.
She also revealed that the prices of bottled water and soft drinks have subtly increased. A bottle of water that previously sold for N100 has increased to N120.
‘We can’t keep to agreements with customers anymore’
The situation was not different at the workshops of Timileyin Babalola, a wielder and Adekunle Ajibade, a printer. Both were seen seated at their workshops at Imalefalafia Street waiting for power to be restored so they could continue with their work.
They said the power situation had badly affected their businesses as they kept most of the jobs they got pending until when power would be available and to take a break from the many hours of running their power generating sets on petrol or diesel, thereby reneging on their agreements with customers.
“Sometimes, we will need light but we will not see it to power our engine to do our work, it affects us. We may go to buy fuel and we will not see, we will wait until when light comes and if light does not come we will tell the person to come back next time when there is light or generator light. They will try to understand because they too know that it is not easy to get fuel this time around,” said Babalola.
“This fuel scarcity is affecting our business due to no light, no fuel, no diesel and prices are being inflated now. We are cutting paper but we didn’t see the light to continue which means we have to wait until the light comes on instead of buying more fuel as we can’t afford to buy fuel. IBEDC was giving us light for at least four hours, but since this week (penultimate week), we just had light today (penultimate Saturday) and it lasted for about one hour,” Ajibade said.
For a country that is one of the top oil producing nations in the world, with an average crude oil production of 1.27 million barrels per day, Ifunanya said the situation was laughable and a mockery of the natural resources the country is endowed with.
“This story of NNPC apologising to us for the fuel scarcity, I feel they need to be more accountable; it is not just tendering apologies. What happened? What went wrong? Beside the fact that we produce oil, we have to export it to import refined ones and we still get adulterated products, this is actually a joke on us as a country because we produce oil but don’t have refineries.”
Erinoso attributed the situation to failed leadership. “I do not see Nigeria now as an oil producing country because it has taken us from 1956 when oil was first discovered up till now we still have to import our own crude oil to be refined and brought in. Nigeria should not be in this situation because there are many third world countries described with Nigeria in the past that have grown beyond Nigeria’s situation,” he said.
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