… Residents Calls for Probe of Perpetrators
An officials of the Abuja Electricity Development Company, AEDC have been alleged to have duped the residents of Army Signal Area, Lokoja of over One Hundred Thousand Naira (#100,000) with a promised of restoring their incessant power problem to the area.
Our correspondent learnt that a top officer of the company, Engineer James Olayemi led other officials of AEDC to the area on Monday after series of complain about persistent power outage for weeks.
Having confirmed the challenges facing the transformer serving the area, Engr Olayemi told the members of the area that would be put to rest if they can pay a sum of #25,000 to acquire elements causing the problem to the transformer.
One of the residents who volunteered to get the money with the popular name called “Peppee” met with other concerned residents and and was able to get the money which he handed over to Engr Olayemi on Tuesday and the AEDC top man promised to solve the situation within 24 hours.
But it was a thing of surprise to the residents that the problem persists. Series of excuses have been given by these people which had led to frustrate the residents after being tired of burning fuels to run generator in order not sleep with serious heat rocking the town.
The residents of Army Signal Area have however, called for probe of the consistent illegal deals by the officials of the company which has not brought the situation to normalcy, just as they prayed the relevant government agencies and individual to wade in to the matter.
“We have been suffering from the AEDC people in this area since beginning of this year, we have paid enough than what we thought just for us to have light despite paying our bills regularly, this is cheating and their directors at Abuja office must know about this,” said Mr Kunle, a resident of the area.
Another occupant of the area told our reporter that “It was one Engr Olayemi that led their NEPA (AEDC) staff to this place after we complained to them about our light situation, they told us we must get #25,000 to solve the problem, but up till now we have not seen light here at Army Signal, later they will say it’s one Breaker or Earthing issues, the same element they have earlier collected the money for, even after that nothing has happened, we have paid close to One hundred thousand Naira, and that’s how they’ve been extorting money from us in this area, they did the same thing for them at Workers’ Village, this is cheating and I think these people collecting money from us illegally must be brought to book,” he said.
When contacted on the telephone, the Public Relations Officer of AEDC confirmed the complaints of the power problem in the area but distanced herself from knowing about the money for repairing the transformer, adding that it was illegal for any of their officials to ask for money before solving any power situation.
The issue of consistent power outage has been a serious challenge to the people of Lokoja metropolis which has yet to receive a proper attention from the management of electricity in the state.
It is expected that those concerned about bringing sanity to the challenges would step up their actions and find a lasting solutions to the problem before it degenerate to chaos.
