Residents groan under poor power supply

By Donald Iorchir
Lack of electricity has crippled the economic activities of night crawlers in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Our correspondent during his survey of some area councils in the territory spoke to some residents.
Mr. Okafor Ndukwe, in his welder’s shop in Kwali Area Council, said electricity supply affected the livelihood of everybody, as virtually everything done with light is at stand still.
He said those operating saloons, barbing/hair salons, welding, dry cleaning businesses, business centers and other small commercial industries that operated with light have been severally affected, as majority of them have no generating sets.
He said: “The small-scale business like saloon, welding workshops like my own, dry cleaning service and others are affected badly as some of them cannot afford using generator everyday as a result of fuel. Even the large-scale businesses, the incessant outbreak out stages of height current sometime not only disturbs production, but also have to breakdown some of the machines which invariably affect the prices of the product.”
Speaking in the same vein, Mrs. Eucheria Obot, a fish merchant, said that electricity outages, especially when their generators are faulty, lead to decay of their fish products.
This she said, always affecst the price as an attempt to recover money lost through fish decay, will result in a high price tag placed on the few good ones.
Mrs. Obot said “it is obvious when these people increase the prices of their products, the people and economic suffers.”
In Gwagwalada, Kuje and Bwari Area Councils, the situation is also bad that some stay for days without light, and whenever light is restored, it will only stay for few hours; this trend residents say makes them to lose faith in the PHCN.
They regretted that government has not only failed the people, but made it a point of duty to tell lies to the citizenry.
Mrs Mary Obebe, a fashion designer at Abaji Area Council, said government “has constantly told us lies by not fulfilling its promises of assuring uninterrupted power supply to the citizenry.” She said with the estimated population of more than 140 million Nigerians, “the country has more than eight power stations, three hydros and five thermal stations, with an overall installed capacity of over 4,000 MW; the country is still faced with the problem of generating electricity needs of its citizenry.”