Residents of Abeokuta are groaning under the prolonged power outage in many parts of the ancient city.As a result of the outage, many areas in Abeokuta metropolis have been thrown into partial or perpetual darkness in the last two months, it was learnt.Investigations revealed that while some areas like Oke-Lantoro, and Abiola Way, did not have light about four weeks, other areas such as GRA, Onikolobo, and Hilltop have been having two to three hours of light in a day.Some residents, who spoke to NAN last week lamented that the power situation in the city was growing from bad to worse and also causing unprecedented hardship.Olayinka Odukoya, a 43-year-old teacher, said that she had never witnessed such long period of outage in her 20 years of staying in the city.``It is very sad and disheartening how Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) has thrown us into perpetual darkness in the last three Months,'' she said.For Chinadu Chizoba, a restaurant operator, ``the situation is digging unhealthy holes in our pockets, because we spend so much to buy fuel on daily basis.``My business demands that I have power every time, otherwise l should not expect customers in my shop.''He further said that the huge sum spent on fuelling his generating set had made him to reduce his staff.Chizoba, however, passionately appealed to the PHCN and the Federal Government to urgently address the issue of outage in the city.Another resident, who pleaded anonymity, said that businesses were collapsing as a result of the situation, adding that the continuous outage would further threaten the security situation in the city.She accused the government of not been sensitive to the yearnings of the people.``In my house, we spend a lot on petrol every day, how do you explain that' It is very ridiculous, we have resigned to faith that PHCN would never improve,'' she said.Also, a 21-year-old student, Lamidi Razaq, lamented the outage, and said that students were planning to stage a peaceful demonstration to call the attention of the Federal Government to the situation.He said that if the situation was not urgently addressed, the students would have no options than to take to the streets in the metropolis.``We have written to the school management to liaise with PHCN and others, we need light we do not want to know how they want to do it,'' he explained.When contacted, the PHCN Head of Distribution unit in Abeokuta, Mr Ayodele Arowoshade, told NAN that the situation was not limited to the city, adding that it was a national phenomenon.He explained that the city was getting just five megawatts out of the six thousand Megawatts of power needed to guarantee regular power supply.Arowoshade, however, gave the assurance that the situation would improve when more megawatts were added to the supply chain in the city.He also attributed the outage in some parts of the town to lackadaisical attitude of some of the residents, adding that PHCN was not informed about some of the problems.``If you don't come or call our office to inform us about a problem in your area, then, how do we know'.`I don't have an indicator in my office that alert me of transformer or other problems, people need to tell us, so that we can get it fixed,'' he said.
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