Niger residents groan as epileptic power supply worsens

Residents of Minna, the Niger State capital and other towns in the state have lamented that they were losing perishable foods stored in refrigerators due to worsening power supply by the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) in the last two months in the state.

One of the residents in Minna, Hadiza Usman of Maitumbi area, said the situation worsened since the beginning of the Ramadan Fasting, causing them to lose foods they stored in their refrigerators.

“We hardly get light for an hour a day.  We use prepaid meter. The issue of storing perishables is not tenable. Despite the current hot weather, you fast the whole day and when you come to break your fast, you have no cold water to drink,” she said.

Another resident, Aliyu B. Abdulmalik of Dutsen Kuran Gwari, Kwaso area, said a piece of ice block was sold at N500 as many houses could not get cold water due to lack of power supply.

“We get light not more than an hour daily or sometimes three hours. You can’t even store perishables; we buy ice blocks daily at the cost of N500 per one,” he lamented.

Mallam Almamum Mahmud Mallam of Gbaiko village, off Western bypass, Minna said “there is no standard regarding the daily power supply. It could be as little as 90 seconds in the daytime and another 90 seconds at night.

“If we’re lucky, we could have supply of 3, 4 or 5 hours. And the voltage could be so low that you could not even iron your clothes with it. Billing is something they never fail to do unlike supplying the electricity for which bills are given.”

Residents said the monthly bills had been increased since last month from N10,000 to N16, 000 while some areas on 33KVA lines said their bills were increased from N15,000 to N30,000.

Effort to get the reaction of the Public Relations Officer of the Regional Office of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) in Minna was not successful, as all the calls to his phone went unanswered.