Estate residents protest long power outage, criticize IKEDC’s repeated “Akute Feeder” explanation.

Omolabake Fasogbon

Residents of Forthright Gardens Estate in Magboro, Ogun State, have complained about weeks of blackout, saying that repeated appeals to authorities have produced no outcome.

Being a Band B estate, residents should receive 12 to 16 hours of electricity each day. According to estate chairman Mr. Adenola Quadri, the community has instead faced weeks of darkness, broken only by sporadic, short bursts of power.

He added that, although residents pay high tariffs for Band B service, they have been denied the promised supply, plunging the community into a severe crisis.

Quadri said that IKEDC officials have repeatedly attributed the outage to a fault in the Akute Feeder.

While we recognize that technical faults occur, it is unacceptable that the same explanation is repeated without a lasting solution.

How many times must we hear ‘Akute Feeder fault’ before it is fixed? At what point does a recurring fault stop being an excuse and become evidence of systemic neglect?

He lamented that residents are left in uncertainty, unsure how long they must endure a crisis that has crippled their social and economic activities.

Families are struggling to keep food and medication fresh, while small businesses suffer heavy losses from relying on generators. Students preparing for exams, the elderly, nursing mothers, and remote workers are all experiencing losses,” he added.

Echoing the chairman’s concerns, residents urged the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, consumer protection agencies, and civil society groups to intervene.

Mrs. Sote, a nursing mother in the estate, said: “I should be focusing on recovering and caring for my newborn, but the prolonged outage has made life unbearable. The heat keeps my baby awake at night, and the stress and cost of running a generator have only added to our burden.”

Mr. Samson E.D. bemoaned the financial strain: “This is taking a heavy toll on our finances and well‑being. We are spending our average monthly electricity budget on petrol in less than two days. We can no longer bear this or stay silent. Something must change now.”

Samuel Adebayo highlighted the domestic impact: “This has hit my family hard. We’ve lost thousands of naira in spoiled food because nothing stays refrigerated. My children can’t study at night, sleeping in the heat is tough, and basic chores are a daily struggle. Worse is the uncertainty. We don’t even know when stable power will return despite paying our bills.”

The residents are demanding immediate restoration of stable supply, a public explanation for the persistent Akute feeder