The GUARDIAN
Residents of Ogudu Government Reservation Area (GRA), Lagos have lamented poor service delivery by the Ikeja Distribution Company (IKEDC) to the area.
The residents said they have been impacted negatively since the kick-off of a bilateral service agreement signed on January 1, 2020.
They stressed that based on the numerous promises made by Ikeja Electric, residents had looked forward to seeing significant improvement in the quality and quantity of electricity, but that has not been the experience to date.
The petition, they said, is to draw the company’s attention to the obvious breaches of the agreement, and demand reversal immediately.
According to the Chairman, Ogudu Valley Residence Association of (OVRA), Elder Samuel Akpan, the bilateral services agreement between IKEDC and residents of OGRA was sold to residents by Ikeja Electric (IE) on the promise of excess power to be dedicated to serving OGRA and upgrade of infrastructure to guarantee quality and quantity of electricity to be executed prior to the commencement of the agreement.
“In addition, IE promised to carry out scheduled regular maintenance to be able to deliver the minimum premium power.
“The implementation of the agreement started with a fundamental breach, and we submit that is responsible for the inability of Ikeja Electric to keep to the terms of the agreement in delivering premium power, in quality and quantity terms.
“On December 26, 2019, OGRA received a broadcast from our then President, that our assessment of the status of the IE technical upgrade indicates that the proposed take-off date of January 1, 2020, was no longer feasible.
“It has been a period of immense pains to residents across all zones of OGRA since the kick-in of the agreement. In signing in to the Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), we were not only promised quantity but also quality. On quality, as far as we are concerned, Ikeja Electric has failed. There is no nicer way to put it. Many of us have lived in OGRA for over 20 years, but we have never had the kind of poor quality of electricity that we have had in the past two years since the PPA came into force. Many have lost numerous AC compressors, refrigerators and deep freezers, Television sets, water pumps etc, due to high or very low voltage.
“Each time we complain, we get generalised responses and are assailed with statistics of 20 hours average of electricity availability in response to any question on IE,” the petition added.