The Landlords’ Association of Jakande Estate, Oke-Afa, Isolo in Ejigbo Local Council Development Area of Lagos on Friday decried what it called permanent power outage on the estate.
The President of the association, Mr Ganiyu Taiwo, said in Lagos that the estate had been without electricity since private investors took over from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria.
According to him, in spite the power outage, residents of the estate were being given “crazy’’ bills.
“The extortion is no longer acceptable to the community.
“The residents have, on many occasions, appealed to the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) for prepaid meters, to no avail.
“I attended different seminars from 2011 to 2013 on prepaid meters, but there are only eight prepaid meters on the estate now.
“Apart from shops on the estate, we have 600 housing units which consist of eight flats each.
“If each of the 4,800 flats on the estate buys five litres of petrol everyday to fuel generating sets, this will amount to about N2.4 million,” he said.
Taiwo appealed to IKEDC to supply electricity to the estate to avoid such expenses.
He said that business enterprises in the community had been crippled.
“We are demanding that IKEDC be made to provide the service for which it was established, and stop extorting money from the residents.
“We are ready to pay for the energy we consume but will resist being coerced into paying arbitrary bills,’’ he said.
Mrs Esther Akinyode, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of IKEDC, said that the power outage was due to old cables on the estate.
Akinyode said that anytime power was restored to the estate, the cables would give way.
She gave the assurance that the cables would soon be replaced.
She, however, said that the estate had more than 100 prepaid meters.
According to her, efforts are being made to give out more prepaid meters to the residents. (NAN)
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