2nd September, 2020
Some residents of Maiduguri have cried out overpower outage adversely affecting the city and its environs for the past five days.
A cross-section of residents, who spoke on Wednesday in Maiduguri, said the outage had affected many businesses.
One of the residents, Salisu Mohammed said “we use to enjoy steady electricity but now it is a total blackout. We thought it was just the usual fault that will be rectified in a few hours but we are now on the fifth day.
“Staff of Yola Electricity Distribution Company (YEDC) that we spoke with told us that the fault was in the bush along Damaturu – Maiduguri road which requires security escort to repair because of insurgents,” Mohammed said.
A soft drink seller, Ibrahim Musa also lamented the lack of electricity, which he said was affecting his business seriously.
“You know Maiduguri is hot and people seriously patronise cold drinks now but this lack of electricity has dwindled our sales by 70 percent,” Musa said.
Some “zobo’’ drink hawkers, Amina Yakubu, Janet Isaac and Hajara Salisu also lamented about the outage that had adversely affected their businesses because they could not find ice blocks to buy to cool their drinks.
“Most of our gains go to ice block sellers who are also complaining of spending much on diesel to power their generators.
“The only solution is to repair the fault for us to have electricity,’’ Isaac said.
However, for mechanics servicing generators, their businesses have recorded a boom.
According to a mechanic, who simply identified himself as Isa Mechanic, there is a sudden rise in his business as people are bringing their generators to be serviced.
“As you can see, I have seven generators now to be serviced unlike before when there was light, we hardly service two generators a day.
“During the period that light was steady, we had to learn how to service “Keke Napep’’ to survive,” Isa said.
When contacted on the blackout, the Senior Manager, Corporate Communications of YEDC, Mr. Kingsley Nkemneme said the fault was with the 330 KV TCN line along Damaturu-Maiduguri road.
He said work was ongoing by TCN to fix it and restore light to Maiduguri and its environs.
“I want to plead with our customers to bear with us and show understanding as we continue to do our best to meet their demands,” Nkemneme said.