By Clara Nwachukwu

The proliferation of uncoordinated power projects in some communities in Delta State have stalled electricity supply in those areas,particularly, Ogwashikwu.

Most of these power projects are said to be promoted by politicians, who do not take into cognisance the  need and peculiarities of the communities where they are put up.

Vanguard had received a complaint from residents in Ogwashikwu, saying that they’ve been denied access to electricity supply in  the past seven years, adding that the takeover of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company, BEDC, by private investors two years ago had not helped matters.

A top management officer of BEDC, who spoke in confidence, told Vanguard on the telephone that the politicians’ power intervention projects were merely compounding the situation for those communities.

The source  said: “Politicians when they engage in their political campaigns, promised to give them transformers, and  of course when they give the transformers, and they energise them, power would come, but  the power coming is from an existing quantity.

“Once they are in a position of authority, they will go and put a sub-station in their home towns, as part of what they are doing for their people, but it is of no use because there is no power to energise them.

“So, when somebody is getting six hours of power, and another person introduces another transformer somewhere, he gets less than six hours  of power; he would likely get four hours. And so the whole country is bastardised with transformers, and that is the reason for the poor power supply in the country.”

As a result of the proliferation of transformers, the source revealed that BEDC is unable to expand its network, saying: “We have over 400 transformers locked up in the store for the past two years, but we refused to use them because there are already transformers everywhere. We are not allowing people into the network because if you bring somebody in, it is the same power that is very poor that you are spreading out.”

The source disclosed that the distribution company has about 1,500 communities under its network, with an estimated 15,500 customers outside the network, which is why “so many locations have not yet been covered is very simpl for the whole country.

“To cover the country by normal standard requirement, you would need over 100,000 megawatts of electricity, and we are at best 5,000MW. So the little they generate is shared among the whole country, which is why there is so much poor power.

“You know that we can only distribute what we have; it becomes very thin and that means everybody would keep on complaining, and nobody would be satisfied.”

The source however, disclosed that the Federal Government, through the Ministry of Power is trying to sanitise the system, saying: “Now Fashola is trying to coordinate, saying, ‘let’s get these things going in orderly manner that is why we have these small issues.’”

With regard to Ogwashikwu, the source said BEDC has been in talks with the communities, saying: “We have talked to them that we are ready, but from what I see is that it seems they are not ready to pay for power. Yes, they have not gotten power for seven years, but we have done extensive enumeration for them to have power.

“We have been telling prominent people in their community to organise their people on payment of electricity bills, and not to buy transformers. For us, buying transformers is not the problem but paying bills is. Politicians should pay their power rather than buying transformers.

“The whole of Delta is taking close to 40 percent of the power we get; Edo gets the same, Ondo and Ekiti are getting the remaining 15 percent. Ekiti is just taking about 5 percent. So who should I take from to increase installed location?”