Fides Media Living the Faith
Some residents and business owners in Okpuno, Awka South Local Government Area of Anambra State, have expressed worry over the lingering total blackout in their community, reports Alexander Johnson Adejoh.
Many of these residents who spoke to Fides lamented the continued power outage, stressing that the blackout had badly affected their businesses.
Fides gathered that the power outage, which started last Thursday, July 1, was as a result of an electrical wire that snapped around 1 City Supermarket, Ossy Gambia Street, off INEC Road, owing to a heavy downpour same Thursday.
The residents and business owners, who lamented the effect of the outage, urged the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company, EEDC, to rectify the fault and restore power.
A resident, Uchenna Nnamdi, who spoke to Fides, said the community had reached out to the distribution company with promises that the fault would be fixed soon but nothing had been done for over 8 days.
He said, ‘For over 7 days now, those of us living in this part of Nodu have not seen what is called light and EEDC cannot come out to tell us of what led to the sudden total power collapse, but they are there in their office giving fake promises that they will soon fix it. When is soon?’
A frozen food seller close to Zaramax Hotel, who identified herself simply as Mama Obi, told Fides that she had incurred debts due to the poor power supply in the community.
She said, ‘Nobody told us that there was a fault anywhere; we just discovered that there was no power when they were supposed to bring it.
‘The electricity in Nodu is nothing to write home about. Early this year, I had to throw away two cartons of turkey when they got spoilt because there was no power and my generator had a fault at that time. I went into serious debt.
‘We’ve even got used to the poor supply because, no matter our complaints to the EEDC, they don’t do anything to resolve the problem.’
Emmanuella Chukwuemeka, a resident of the community who also lamented the poor supply in the area, urged the distribution company to rectify the fault as soon as possible.
However Fides learnt through an informal source for the distribution company that the firm was working on restoring supply to the community, although efforts to reach the EEDC Business Operation Manager in Awka were fruitless as at press time.