- Ikeja military cantonment suffers poor electricity supply
- Residents and businesses decry poor supply
- Ikeja Electric says the rising debt is the cause of poor supply
According to a publication by Premium Times, the Ikeja Military Cantonment continues to suffer from poor electricity supply. As a result, residents of the cantonment and businesses have resorted to self-generation to provide for their electricity needs and commercial purposes. Residents of the cantonment stated that the electricity challenges have gone on for six years.
”I spend thousands of naira fueling my generator monthly just to cushion the effect of the bad power supply on my family. It is bad enough that we cannot use certain home appliances due to bad power supply.” Moses John, a resident, said.
Uche Achude, a businessman who runs a printing press at the mammy market, said, ”The cost of fueling generators and repairing them when they get faulty is way higher than the gains made in the business. We do not get to use the light because, by the time they bring it, we have already closed.”
Responding to the story, Akinola Ayeni of Ikeja Electric said that the issue of poor supply at the cantonment had lingered this long due to the failure of the barracks to pay electricity arrears. ”All we ask everybody to do is to pay their electricity bills, and in a situation where they cannot pay, we cannot continue to will our energy to where they are not ready to pay electricity bill at all,” Ayeni said.
The spokesperson of the Nigerian Army, Mohammed Yerima, said ”We have been begging the National Assembly to look into that, how are we going to get the money to pay? We have the whole Nigerian Army and Armed Forces to pay for,”