No lights: What’s going on with the long power cuts in Lagos?

by Adedayo Ademuwagun

Electricity supply has dwindled in Lagos lately, and as a result, residents in some parts of the city have been experiencing severe power cuts over the last one month.

“We’ve been experiencing frequent power outage in my neighbourhood for some time now,” says Antonia who lives in Ogba. “Supply was a lot better some months ago and things seemed to be looking up. But now the rate is worse. Most of the time the lights come on at midnight and are often off during the day. I don’t know what’s going on these days.”

The problem is not happening in Lagos alone though. In Benin for example, last week some people were on the road to rally about the long power cuts they’d been experiencing. Things have been quite rough around the country concerning power supply.

It wasn’t like this recently. Just a few months ago, supply actually improved vastly in Lagos. Many residents enjoyed supply for upward of 16 hours a day. Generators were practically redundant. Even kids didn’t normally have to yell any more when power was restored, because they were now getting used to seeing the lights on. People were relieved and positive about the ongoing reforms in the power sector.

Ifeoma says, “It was like after the privatisation, they put some new guys in charge of the switch who didn’t know how to switch off the thing. I loved it. I rarely used to put on my generator. The supply was reliable and we had lights on for entire days. It was great, and I thought that yes, this privatisation thing is finally working.”

Officials say the drop in supply is due to generation cuts caused by gas shortages, but some of the issues are being resolved and things have begun to pick up in some areas.

Sola is in Alagbado for example. He says, “The lights have been off for nearly all of three weeks now, but today we had lights for the first time in as many weeks. The officials from Ikeja Electric office in the area said they just got units of electricity from the transmission company. So I guess they’re working to fix the problems, and before long we’ll be having regular supply again.”

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