Residents of Waterfront Estate, Sekumade Estate and the NBC Community in the Ebute area of Ikorodu Local Government Area, Lagos State, on Friday staged a peaceful protest to highlight a prolonged power outage that has plunged their neighbourhoods into darkness for months.
The frustrated residents marched to the Ikorodu Business District office of Ikeja Electric, where they barricaded the entrance and disrupted movement in and out of the facility for hours.
Holding placards with inscriptions like “IKEDC! You are meant to be an agent of light, not darkness” and “Eight months without power is enough, restore our electricity,” the demonstrators lamented the impact of the blackout on homes and businesses.
They explained that electricity supply to the three communities has been cut off since August 2025 after the sole transformer serving the area developed a fault and was neither fixed nor replaced.
Speaking during the protest, a resident, Moshood Aderibigbe, accused the distribution company of repeatedly failing to fulfil promises made to the communities.
“Before resorting to this protest, we held two meetings with Ikeja Electric officials over the faulty transformer, but nothing concrete was done. All we got were promises without action,” he said.
Aderibigbe added that the prolonged outage has badly affected economic activities, forcing many residents to depend on generators and spend heavily on fuel.
According to the protesters, artisans, traders and small business operators have recorded heavy losses, while families continue to struggle with the high cost of alternative power sources.
Tension reportedly escalated during the protest when residents demanded to speak with the district’s Business Manager. Although the official briefly appeared at the office, he left without addressing the crowd.
Normalcy was later restored after a senior company official met with the protesters, sympathising with their situation and assuring them that steps were being taken to resolve the problem.
He noted that repairing or replacing faulty transformers follows laid-down procedures that can take time, adding that about 300 damaged transformers across Ikorodu are currently awaiting attention.
“We are making efforts to restore electricity as quickly as possible. It does not benefit us for customers to remain in darkness because the company also loses revenue,” the official said.
He assured residents that the process would be accelerated and promised that representatives of the affected communities would be engaged on March 5, when a clearer timeline for restoring power would be shared.