Small business owners in the Akute-Odo area of Ogun State are currently counting their losses as four weeks of blackouts bite harder and throw their means of livelihood to a halt.
This is just as residents of the same community lament lack of sleep due to the disturbing sound emanating from the generating sets at nearly every household in the affected area during the late hours.
PUNCH Metro gathered that the community was thrown into darkness after a truck pulled off an electric cable, which affected about three other electric poles that supply power to the area.
Our correspondent further learnt from some of the residents that after days of a blackout, community leaders approached each landlord to contribute N2,000 for the repair of the poles.
Despite the contributions, residents and business owners are lamenting the protracted blackout, which they say is affecting their living standards.
A barber, identified simply as Abdul, who told our correspondent on Monday that the blackout had affected his take-home pay, said his customers now patronised his competitors in other communities to have their hair cut.
“Do you know how much we used to spend on fuel? You can’t even buy N2,000 to attend to five customers. This is not my shop. I deliver every week. If I add just N100 to the usual price, my customers will not allow it. They would rather go to the other community than pay extra.
“People have already contributed to restore the light. I feel like I am the only person that this blackout has affected. What I take home is no longer enough to cater for my family because of the fuel that I buy every time,” Abdul lamented.
Wasiu, another barber just a few metres from Abdul’s shop, narrated his ordeal, saying, “The blackout has affected me badly. All the money I make is spent on fuel.”
An elderly woman known as Mama Amarachi, who sells soft drinks in a shop just by the roadside, said her cold sachet water business had been crippled since the blackout started last month.
She said, “I cannot get ice-block around. I will have to travel down to Alagbole or Berger before I can get one. Where will I get transport? Am I going to add it to the price of each soft drink when the price is lower in a nearby community?”
Meanwhile, a resident identified as Abiodun Olamide said the blackout had affected her sleep due to disturbing noise from neighbours’ power-generating sets.
“To sleep in the night is a problem since the poles have had issues for more than three weeks. My neighbours don’t switch off their generators until past 2 or 3am sometimes. This noise disturbs other neighbours who do not have generators to have a good sleep.”
A community leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the delay was a result of some incidents that happened when the officials of Ikeja Electric were repairing the damaged poles.
The community leader said, “If you go to the scene, you will discover that about three poles have already been mounted. The last one fell, broke, and even nearly killed a kiosk owner when it was about to be mounted by the officials of IE.
“The other day, when they (IE officials) came to continue the repair, someone fell off the pole. It was a serious issue. They will finish it sooner than you think.”
When contacted, the spokesperson for the IE, Kingsley Okotie, directed our correspondent to forward his inquiries to his WhatsApp number.
“Pls, who is the community interfacing within IE? Share details of correspondences, if any, to enable us to get updates on what could be the issue,” he said via a message when PUNCH Metro contacted him via a WhatsApp Messenger App.
However, he didn’t give a further response when our correspondent told him that he neither knew the person the community was interfacing with nor had seen any correspondence to that effect.