Residents of the Sobi Poly Feeder at Oke-Fomo in Ilorin West Local Government Area, which encompasses 44 communities, staged a protest on Wednesday over an extended power outage.

The communities have been without electricity since February 2024, according to reports from the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). During the peaceful demonstration, residents stated that they last enjoyed a stable power supply from the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) around January of the previous year.

Carrying placards, the protesters demanded that IBEDC take immediate action to resolve the issue and restore power to the Kwara Poly feeder, which serves their communities.

Some of the inscriptions on the placards are: “We are tired of blackout”, “Darkness is killing us, provide reliable electricity”, “No light No life” and “Power to the people not just a promise”.

Oke-Fomo community leader, Abdulkareem Jimoh, said what was being experienced was lamentable.

“The continued sufferings of residents in these affected communities, when other communities in the state are enjoying power supply, is lamentable,” he said.

Jimoh said the blackout had crippled the communities’ economic activities and they could not continue to buy fuel to power their generators because of the economic downturn.

He said the communities were using 100MVA transformer before it got spoilt and IBEDC brought 45MVA transformer.