About a hundred residents of a section of Nru in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State have been thrown into darkness following the collapse of their transformer.
The affected residents, mainly occupying streets along Enugu Road, claimed that they have been in darkness for almost two months, and the end is not yet in sight.
“The outage began in early September, and it has lingered since then,” said one of the residents, who identified himself as Mike.
“We are now contributing a minimum of N5,000 to raise over a million naira to repair the faulty transformer. Some residents are donating in hundreds of thousands of naira,” he added.
According to another resident, who did not mention his name, “The development has collapsed everything we do here. I have a pub, and the outage has made the cost of running the business very difficult. I appeal to the concerned authorities to salvage the situation.”
It was gathered that the authorities of the state electricity agency had evacuated the faulty transformer to Enugu for repairs.
Anthony Omeh, a teacher, said, “We are aware that the authorities should fix it immediately, but they are not forthcoming. That is why we are taxing ourselves to fix it. It’s almost two weeks since they evacuated it, but nothing positive yet.
“More worrisome is that the same agency is still sending us bills for the two months we didn’t have power supply. What a country!”
Ezinne Omeke, a tailor, appealed to the senator representing Enugu North Senatorial Zone, Senator Okey Ezea, to rescue them.
She said, “Also affected is the constituency office of our senator. He should come to our rescue. We are dying. The cost of running businesses on petrol is too high.”