Ondo Community Protest 5 Months Power Outage, Insecurity

Residents of Irese town in Ifedore Local Government Area of Ondo State, on Monday, took to the streets to protest over eight months of power outage in their community.

The angry residents, both young and aged, trooped out in their large numbers to barricade the main roads with woods, benches, and tables for several hours.

The protest forced residents to hurriedly close their shops and placed them under lock and key disallowing the movement of vehicles and motorcycles from coming and entering the town.

While lamenting that the community had been in total darkness for five months, the protesters berated the authorities of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) for being insensitive to their plight.

Addressing journalists on behalf of other residents, Ms Ifeoluwa Olomofe, said the darkness which enveloped the community had increased the level of insecurity thereby necessitating the protest.

She explained that the five months power outage had adversely affected their businesses, especially the artisans in the community.

According to her, “For close to five months now, the residents of Irese community have been in total darkness. A situation that has paralyzed local businesses, while some were even shut down and this development has heightened insecurity.

“Many of us cannot work as there is no electricity to run our business again as artisans. How do we now feed our family as those who are supposed to give us jobs or contracts cannot do that again since we have no electricity to work?

The spokesman for the BEDC, Akure Branch, Mr. Michael Barnabas, said the transformers in the community were damaged by vandals who stole some oil from them noting that the issue would soon be resolved.