Residents of Waterfront Estate, Sekumade Estate, and NBC Community in the Ebute area of Ikorodu Local Government Area of Lagos State on Friday staged a peaceful protest over what they described as eight months of total blackout in their communities.
The protesters converged on the Ikorodu Business District office of Ikeja Electric, barricading the entrance and restricting movement in and out of the premises for several hours. Carrying placards with inscriptions such as, “IKEDC! You are supposed to be an agent of light, not an agent of darkness,” and “Eight months in darkness. Enough is enough. Restore our light,” the residents decried the prolonged power outage and its impact on their daily lives.
According to the demonstrators, the blackout began in August 2025 after the only transformer serving the three estates developed a fault and was not replaced. They alleged that repeated efforts to engage officials of Ikeja Electric yielded no tangible outcome.
One of the protesters, Moshood Aderibigbe, accused the company of insincerity, stating that the protest became inevitable after months of unfulfilled assurances. He explained that residents had held at least two meetings with officials of the distribution company in a bid to secure the repair or replacement of the faulty transformer.
He further disclosed that women from the community, alongside their councillor, visited the company’s Alausa head office in January, where they were promised feedback within three weeks. According to him, no response had been received since then.
Aderibigbe lamented that the prolonged outage had crippled businesses and disrupted livelihoods within the affected communities. He noted that artisans, traders, and small business owners had suffered significant losses, while households continued to grapple with the high cost of fueling generators to cope with the absence of electricity.
Residents called on Ikeja Electric to urgently replace the faulty transformer and restore power supply, warning that continued neglect could further worsen economic hardship in the area.
