Residents of Waterfront Estate, Sekumade Estate and NBC Community in the Ebute area of Ikorodu in Lagos state protested Friday over what they described as eight months without electricity.
The demonstrators gathered at the Ikorodu Business District office of Ikeja Electric, barricading the entrance and blocking movement in and out of the premises for several hours.
Holding placards with messages such as “You are supposed to be an agent of light, not an agent of darkness” and “Eight months in darkness. Enough is enough,” the residents said the prolonged outage had caused severe hardship.
They said the blackout began in August 2025 after the only transformer serving the three estates developed a fault and was not replaced.
Residents added that repeated attempts to engage the electricity distribution company had yielded no results.
One protester, Moshood Aderibigbe, accused the company of failing to act despite multiple meetings.
“Before we came out to protest, we had two interfaces with officials of Ikeja Electric so that we could have our transformer fixed or replaced, but nothing was done,” he said. “They promised to get back to us in three weeks. As I speak to you, they have not.”
Aderibigbe said businesses and livelihoods had been severely affected, with many residents relying on fuel-powered generators at high cost.
He added that artisans, traders and small business owners in the area had suffered significant losses, while households struggled with rising fuel expenses.
During the protest, residents declined to address a company official and insisted on speaking with the district’s business manager. The manager reportedly arrived but left without addressing the crowd, increasing tensions.
A senior company official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, later addressed the protesters. He expressed sympathy and acknowledged that previous engagements had not resolved the issue.
The official said repairing or replacing faulty transformers involves procedures that can take time.
“We are putting in the effort to ensure that power is restored as soon as possible,” he said. “There are about 300 faulty transformers across Ikorodu currently in our workshop, and we can only fix or replace them one at a time.”
He assured residents that efforts would be expedited and promised to provide a timeline after consulting with the company’s head office.
The official also said he would meet with representatives of the affected communities on March 5 to give an update on steps taken to resolve the outage.
