Enugu Residents, Businesses Count Losses Over Power Outages

A cross section of residents and business owners in Enugu State have lamented continuous losses due to epileptic power and high cost of electricity tariff witnessed in the state.

They made their feelings known in separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on the incessant power outages in the state.

The residents called on the Enugu State government to use the increased monthly federal allocation and Internally Generated Revenue to build a power plant in the state.

The Methodist Archbishop of Enugu, Most Rev. Christopher Edeh, described the situation as “worrisome” considering the amount of money the Federal Government had spent on the power sector.

Edeh complained that the churches ran generators for their programmes worth millions of naira.

The cleric urged the federal government to declare a state of emergency in the power sector.

The SMEs also urged the federal and state governments to, in the interim, invest in the national centralised grid system to ensure that the frequency of collapse was checked.

A tailor in Mayor Bus stop, Agbani Road, Mr Chukwumerije Ugwu, said that his productivity had nosedived within the last three months due to epileptic power supply.

Ugwu said most times, he would appeal to his customers to be patient with him but some of them would get angry and take their patronage away.

According to him, just recently after pressure from a customer owing to two-days blackout, I used charcoal iron to sew the cloth and unfortunately the cloth got burnt and I spent N8,000 to replace the cloth.

“There is a need for Enugu State to build and run its own power generation and transmission system. Just like what was obtainable in Abia with the Geometric Power.

“Vast area of the Abia State currently enjoys uninterrupted supply devoid of total grid collapse,” he said.