19 August 2014, Uyo – Ikot Unah community in Ukanafun Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State, on Tuesday peacefully protested over 10 years of power outage in their area.
The protesters, who were mostly youths and students on holiday, went through some of the major streets before heading to the village palace where they narrated their grievances.
The village head, Chief Jimmy Umoren, told our correspondent that for the past 10 years, the village has not seen electricity for a minute.
“There has been no sign of electricity from either the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria or the new Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution, not even for a minute.
“Our hope of getting electricity is in comatose; there is no government officials, both from the state and the local government council at Ukanafun have come to our aid. In the last election, we voted for this government massively.
“The state government said it has attained 85 per cent electricity coverage of the state through the Inter-ministerial Direct Labour Projects while records have shown that the Ministry of Rural Development has also electrified about 2,209 villages out of 2,671 communities in the state to meet government target and vision of providing uninterrupted power supply in the state.
“But the same gesture accorded in other villages in the state has not been extended to us at Ikot Unah of which we feel very bad.
“What we cannot tell is whether our community has been included in the list of the area that the state government prided itself to have provided electricity for,” he said.
He stated that the community had also made many representations to the state governor, Mr. Godswill Akpabio through the office of their council chairman in Ukanafun but to no avail.
He added that the community had also visited management of PHED in Uyo, the officials there promised them that they would be at the community to check what prevented them from getting electricity.
He noted that the PHED has been to the community to correct the defect and that the entire community was still in darkness.
He said, “For a country like Nigeria with a total population of about 170 million people with huge economic potentialities, the provision of quality and steady power supply is still a nightmare, especially in a small community such as ours. What a shame!” he exclaimed.
Umoren stated that the only health centre built by the government six years ago has not been put to use for lack of electricity.
– The Punch