Community denies Reps access to power plant

RESIDENTS of Ijede community in Ikorodu area of Lagos openly displayed their resentment at poor power supply to their town yesterday when they denied

members of the House of Representatives and officials of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) access to the nation’s biggest power plant at Egbin in their area.

Hundreds of youths trooped out to barricade the road to the plant, chanting anti-government songs and displaying placards to protest blackout they have allegedly suffered for about two years.

The wild youths and their community leaders engaged the lawmakers in a tough confrontation that lasted for several hours. Ijede is the community that harbours Egbin Power Plant in Ikorodu area of Lagos.

Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Power, led by their Chairman, Patrick Ikhariale, were on inspection tour of the  Egbin power plant to examine the state of the plant and the level of implementation of projects earmarked in the 2012 budget, but they were forced to go back at the slightest opportunity.

Although, the community is still mourning the demise of its king, the leaders claimed the seemingly perennial blackout has crippled business activities in the area.

Ikhariale, who was visibly worried by the situation, took his time to calm the angry protesters who turned a deaf ear and insisted on “no entrance.” The lawmaker who noted that the community had a case, said the residents were addressing it in a wrong manner. He promised that the lawmakers would look into the matter.

“The people of Ikorodu, for a long time, have unfortunately become the proverbial dog that carves horn for other animals but the children does not have horn,” Ikhariale said, adding that their agitations were part of the priority issues expected to be discussed at the meeting.

After several hours of fruitless effort to get to the power plant, he said: “We are going back, since they have denied us access to the power plant. They have a case but they are addressing it in the wrong manner. I believe whatever reasons they are doing this might have been the reason for our visit, to ensure that this power plant remains viable and serve Nigerians efficiently.”

A community elder, Kamoru Olowoogbe said: “PHCN has been suffering us for over two years. We only had light for a few hours on Independence Day and we have not seen light since then. We suspect that our power allocation are sold to the industrial area for abnormal profit. We appeal to government to come to our aid, the power is generated on our soil and we are the worst casualty of outage.”

A resident, Fatai Aniyera, said: “PHCN has proved to be our enemy despite the fact that we accommodated them on our soil. As the host community, we are expected to have good supply with some incentives, but we are suffering in silence, our businesses are going down due to outages. We need help, we need light.”

The Chief Operating Officer, Egbin Power Plant, Mike Uzoigwe, flayed the action of the community, which he said was baseless, as, according to him, plans were at advanced stage to ensure regular power supply to the area.

He explained that Egbin is a generation power plant, which was not designed to provide direct supply into the community, adding that he had aligned with the distribution company to ensure that Ijede is given priority in power supply.