The protesters in a convoy of vehicles, motorcycles as well as pedestrians marched through major of the town beginning from Oke-Eruru chanting anti-IBEDC songs and armed with placards with various inscriptions.
Some of the inscriptions reads; “IBDEC RESTORE OUR LIGHT” ; “365 days Today without light at Oke-Eruru, Odogo, Odo-Ese”; “Part of Egboro land has been dislocated; “Hon Raji Fashola what are you doing?”; “We don’t want Okada again, give us light”; “As from now, no light, no IBDEC in Ijebu Ijesa.”; “All businesses crippled for over one year”.
Speaking during a chat with journalists, one of the community leaders, Venerable Fatokun Julius of Ijesa North Anglican Diocese, Ijebu Ijesa said, “we started experiencing epileptic power supply sometimes in 2015 to early part of 2016. We started experiencing total black out from August 2016 and we have since then remain in darkness”.
“All efforts to get the electricity restored proved abortive. Even when the community took it upon itself to see whether they can facilitate repairs on the damaged transformer to bring some succor, we couldn’t still have our ways due to logistic and bottle necked of the IBDEC”.
Commenting further on the moves made by the community leaders to fix the power problem, Fatokun said, “we have done a lot, we have waited for them for so long but when we waited for long without any fruitful outcome, then we went to sought for their permission to go and undertake repairs on the damaged transformer since they told us that there is no transformer anywhere”.
“So we agreed in confidence to repair the damaged one, which we did. After the first effort failed, we came to IBDEC in Ijebu Ijesa and they recommended another contractor whom they said repaired that of Kajola in Ilesa which is still working till date We paid N600,000 to the contractor and up till today they have been dribbling us. So, we came back to our community and had a meeting to know the next step to take thinking of who can help us. We have engaged people to talk to our political office holders but no response”, he posited.
Fatokun added that, “the IBDEC later cut off our lights, restore light to some areas like Oba’s palace, filling stations where they can generate more money. We are making efforts tirelessly to get our lights restored but all to no avail. We went to Oba in council to complain and the council gave us Chief Inurin, who went with us to Ibadan IBDEC to lodge our complaint but later discovered that no complaint was lodged by IBDEC, Ijebu Ijesa to their office in Ibadan”.
“We have been to the regional headquarters in Osogbo where we found out that IBDEC Ijebu Ijesa lodged complaint but nothing has been done on it. The resort to generate over Six million Naira (N6,000,000) monthly has made IBDEC to cut about four communities off and concentrated their efforts on the few where they double their tariffs.
“We are calling on our representatives such as Senator Babajide Omoworare, Hon Oluwole Oke, Hon Israel Aloba and other well-meaning Nigerians to come to our aids in Ijebu Ijesa so that we can get out of darkness and receive light”, Fatokun asserted.
Reacting over the protest, the spokesperson for IBDEC, Miss Kikelomo Owoeye implored the community to exercise patience and restraint, stressing that their request was being attended to.
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