THE Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) on Thursday urged residents in Saki and environs in Oyo State to bear with it over the poor power supply to the areas.
Mr Lawal Niyi, a representative and Saki Team Leader of IBEDC, made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Saki, a border town in Oyo State.
Niyi said that the poor power supply situation was not deliberate, but due to a low power supply from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) Centre in Iseyin.
He said that the entire area needed about 54 megawatts to ensure adequate power supply, “but what we now have at the TCN Centre in Iseyin is a transformer with 19 megawatts capacity to supply the entire areas.
“The initial capacity of the transformer was 30 megawatts, but because it is now old, it can only transmit 19 and that is what we can distribute to the consumers.
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“Saki alone needs 19 megawatts, so if we distribute to Saki, it means all others will be in darkness for that period, so, we have to ration what we have,’’ he said.
He said that efforts were ongoing to establish more TCN centres in the bid to boost power supply to the towns and villages.
Some residents in Saki in Saki West Council area of Oyo State have bemoaned what they described as the “perpetual outage”.
Those, who spoke with NAN in separate interviews, said the situation was becoming “worrisome and unbearable”.
Mr Gafar Moshood, a middle-aged community leader in Saki, appealed to the government to come to the aid of residents in the ancient town.
“This is absolutely worrisome and unbearable; we have been in darkness for about three months now, we run our businesses on generator everyday and its making life very difficult for us here in Saki town.
“I want to appeal to IBEDC and other relevant agencies to please have mercy on us; things are really bad for us here with respect to power supply,” he said.
Mr Waliu Tijani, another community leader, also bemoaned the situation, saying the area that enjoyed more power supply in Saki was Komi area.
“The area gets power for four hours once in every seven days, while other areas may not have power for several months.
“We have done all that is required and all that our collective resources can bear to ensure that we reverse this very ugly narrative, but all to no avail.
“We are appealing again for intervention,” he said.
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