Kwara Community Stays 10 Years Without Electricity

Lack of power supply for almost 10 years due to a faulty transformer has made life miserable for the people of Oke Adini, Sango area of Ilorin, Kwara State.

Residents and shop owners in the area lamented that the lack of a power supply has ruined their businesses, saying that they spent more money buying petroleum to power their generating sets.

They said the problem of irregular or no power supply at all in the last 10 years was due to the state of disrepair of the transformer serving the area.

A resident of the area and a senior reporter with a state-owned media, Hakeem Olatidoye, confirmed the area’s lack of power supply in the last ten years.

Another resident of Oke Adini, Alhaja Bolaji Saka said they couldn’t preserve meat, fish and other edibles in their refrigerators because of the absence of electricity.

LEADERSHIP gathered that the problem of lack of electricity supply to the area was compounded by the failure of a contractor to supply the approved transformer for the use of the community.

It was gathered that the federal government had in 2022 awarded a N44.5m contract for the installation of transformers at Oke Adini and some other communities in Kwara State.

The Ministry of Power approved the contract and put its supervision under the Rural Electrification Agency(REA), it was gathered.

The power project was facilitated by former senator representing Kwara central, Dr Yahaya Oloriegbe .

“No new transformer was supplied or installed for our community’s use. When the load was too much on one of the available transformers which made it blow up, we contributed funds to fix it, “ Olatidoye said.

Olatidoye and other respondents appealed to the Kwara State government to come to their aid by installing a new transformer for the community.