By Ediri EJOH, Etim ESIN & Olayinka AJAYI

With the addition of the 220 megawatts from the newly rehabilitated Egbin turbine, many residents in Lagos are still frustrated by the poor electricity supply and its adverse impact on their businesses. Sweetcrude learnt that while some areas in Lagos continue to groan in darkness, others are luckier and enjoy more than 12hours daily supply.

Some of the areas that still lament of poor power supply include: MagodoIsheri, Ajegunle, Ebute Meta, Cele, Oluti, Navy Town, Surulere, Ojodu Berger, Badagry etc. But among those who enjoy relatively stable supply are Ago, Iba, Araromi,Ajegunle (Amukoko- Ajeromi), where Amukokogets up to 5hrs/day, and AjeromiIfelodun, 8hrs/day.
Residents speak For Miss Gloria Odede in Ishaga, “There is no hope for steady power supply in this country because as it stands, supply of power to this area is depleting daily.” She noted that the experience last year, was even better, but the situation has gone from bad to worse. In Ebute Meta, where supply fluctuates between three and five in two days, Mr. Lekan Gabriel, decried that “it is most catastrophic that a popular area like ours cannot boost of 10 hours of power supply a day.

Instead, we get consistent bills without steady supply of power.” For Mr. David Otogbolo, an engineer, the situation inOko- Afo deteriorated since the past eight months. He said that, “most times we have to celebrate low power voltage because we often see this power to enjoy. Sometimes, it does come two/three days’ interval and other times for stretch of four days, we won’t have power.

For areas like Ikotun, Mushin, Oshodi, Shomolu, residents experiences are slightly different, as some residents complained that they get about five hours supply in four days. But some areas in Mushin confess to receiving up to 10hours, while Oshodigets about eight hours daily. But for residents in Surulere, power supply has been steady at four hours daily.
Others celebrate
Unlike the residents that are complaining, others in some areas have cause to smile with more than 14 to 20 hours daily power supply.  Residents at Ile-Ipo,Badagry Road, admit to having up to 16 hours supply, while those in Ago talk about between 12 and 14hours daily.  At Olodi- Apapa (Ajeromi), the chief executive of Excellence Technology, Mr. Daniel Ekanem, said, “For us in Ajeromi LCA, the power supply has been very fair.” Just as Mr. Femi Akingbade, a pharmacist atOjodu-Berger area said, “the power situation here is a bit fair.

We have never stayed a day without having power and that has to some extent helped businesses to strive. But we would like to encourage the Discos to improve and make life better for us as in Nigeria.

Reprieve under way
The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, has however reassured Lagosians that there will soon be cause for them to smile, as efforts are ongoing to fix the vandalised gas pipelines that resulted in reduced supply of gas to power generation companies in the Western axis. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Sweetcrude, the Minister of Power, Nebo said, “the reason Lagosians are suffering for the past two weeks is as a result of vandals that struck and knocked out the Escravos-Lagos Pipeline System–A (ELPS-A) about two weeks ago, which is assiduously under repairs and the work is yet to be completed”.
According to him, “This attack on our facility is the latest in what has become a sinister bi-weekly occurrence of incidents of vandalism on the Trans-Niger Pipeline, the Trans-Forcados Pipeline of the Escravos-Lagos Pipeline all of which have deleterious impact of keeping gas supply to power plants at well below current power generation capacity of 5,000MW.”
He however, explained that the current low levels of power supply hovering at about 3,900 MW happened at a time that “the gas plant at OBEN was shut down for its scheduled maintenance and enhancement of its capacity. When the OBEN maintenance is done, we would have additional gas supply which should bring about improvements to electricity supply”.  The minister also added that ”the Utorogu gas plant and the Pan Ocean gas plant are also being worked on to enhance capacity”.