Protests in Nasarawa community over eight months blackout

The residents of Ungwar Yazawa community in Lafia Local Government Area of Nasarawa State have staged a protest over an eight months total blackout in the community.

The protesters, who took to the streets of Lafia down to the head office of Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) Lafia, decried the situation of the persistent outage, adding that this has contributed to the increasing crime rates in their community.

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Speaking to journalists, the leader of the community, Mr Shuibu Zanwa Buba, said AEDC had ignored all their complaints.

He added that the AEDC was not showing any concern over their predicament, noting that the only alternative was to stage a peaceful demonstration in order to attract the attention of authorities to the unfair treatment and injustice meted by the AEDC.

Protesters who were seen carrying placards with various inscriptions such as, “AEDC fix our light and get access to your office”, “Governor Abdullahi Sule has given us electricity transformer but AEDC refused to connect us”, “Governor has given us light but AEDC denied us”, “AEDC return our light”.

According to him, for the past eight months, the residents of Ungwar Yazawa had no electricity supply in spite of efforts made by the community to get a new electricity transformer from the state government, which was approved and released.

“We have written to His Excellency, Governor Abdullahi Sule and he graciously approved and released the electricity transformer to us. For over two months now the transformer was on the ground, but AEDC remained adamant as it refused to connect us.

“AEDC seems to be deliberately working against the interest of the community for the reasons best known to them,” he added.

He said it is their fundamental right as customers to seek justice.

He, therefore, urged Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to call AEDC to order and to explain why they had not powered the new transformer on the ground.

While reacting, the AEDC’s Human Resources Manager, Hajiya Zainab Ibrahim, pledged that the electricity transformer would be connected with power before the end of working hours of Monday.