Residents of Afaake, a community in the Ejigbo Local Government Area of Osun State, have been in total darkness for over seven months due to the breakdown of a single transformer in March.
According to the community, the situation had crippled small businesses, worsened access to clean water, and disrupted the education and safety of their children.
A resident of the community, Taiwo Adebayo, said, “This issue of no light and transformer for over seven months has affected the community in so many ways. Children can’t study at night, because there’s no light.
“Even to charge our phones is a big problem; we have to trek five kilometres to the next village to access light, except for people who can afford to buy fuel for their generators, and we know the cost of fuel nowadays is high.”
According to him, the blackout has made access to water difficult, as the community’s four boreholes depend on electricity.
“We use electricity to power our boreholes, but since the transformer became faulty, we have been suffering. People now buy sachet water to survive, but buying water is not easy due to its high cost. Businesses are dying. I buy and sell cocoa produce, but companies from Lagos now find it difficult to reach us because of bad roads and lack of power,” Adebayo added.
Another resident, Taofeek Ganiyu, accused their political leaders of neglecting the community since the transformer broke down.
“We feel used and abandoned. Our votes don’t seem to matter anymore. The rate we buy fuel is too high, yet we need it to pump water and power our refrigerators.
“The situation has turned our community into an isolated village.
There is no light, no water, and no road,” he said.
Also, another resident, Faruq Abbas, a former Peoples Democratic Party House of Assembly candidate in the 2019 General Elections, in a letter to Governor Ademola Adeleke, appealed for the deployment of a new transformer, noting that the situation had made life unbearable for the community.
He wrote: “We first reached out to the IBEDC, and they came for repairs. But the transformer exploded again. They later told us that it was damaged beyond repair.
“I also contacted our House of Representatives member, Bamidele Salam, and he promised to help once new transformers were available. That was four months ago. Still, nothing has been done”.
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