Date: 2020-12-21

Some of the residents of Labala Isale Community Layout in Ilorin West Local Government Area of Kwara have appealed to the state government to provide them with a transformer and end eight years of poor electricity supply.

They made the appeal on Sunday in Ilorin.

They said that the lack of stable power supply had brought a setback to social and economic activities in the area.

Michael Adebayo, the Chairman of the community, told NAN that the community had been experiencing epileptic power supply since 2012.

Adebayo said that the settlement suffered poor electricity supply because it has never had a transformer of its own.

According to him, the community with over 200 houses and thousands of residents are connected to a transformer at Joro Isale community, to get electricity supply.

"The people of Joro Isale gave us one out of the four leg-lines of their transformer. Meanwhile, the one given to us has been overloaded by users already to the extent that we always experience low voltage.

"In every two weeks, we have to repair our jumper because of the load on the transformer. That is our plight in the community."

Adebayo said that the community had written several letters of appeal to past governments in the state without any positive result.

He said that the same letter had been written to the present government through the state Ministry of Energy.

He said that the community was convinced that the issue would be resolved this time around while urging the government to fast track the process.

"There is hope actually because, after the submission of the latest letter, we were invited for discussion.

"After that, a contractor called us that we should take a copy of our letter to the Government House which we had done. "So, we are still making further efforts now to ensure that our request is attended to.

"Therefore, I want to, on behalf of the community, plead with our listening governor to give us a transformer so as to bring life back to this community.”

Also speaking, the Vice-Chairman of the community, Saadu Suleiman, explained that despite the fact that the community was just developing, thousands of residents with over 200 houses are currently residing there.

Suleiman said that the community discovered that the transformer it was using has the capacity that could serve about 200 houses conveniently, however, about 500 houses are depending on it for power supply now.

He said that the overcrowding of the transformer was what lead to low voltage and sometimes, outright blackout in the area.

"We want to appeal to Gov. AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, through the state Commissioner for Energy, Aliyu Sabi, to give us a transformer to ease the pressure and heavy load currently mounted on the transformer serving the community,” he said.