Ashamu East, Promised Land bicker over transformer bills
By Motolani AbdulGafar
Two community development associations – Ashamu East and Promised Land- are bickering over the maintenance of the transformer that provides electricity to them.
While Ashamu East is accusing Promised Land of failing in its duty to share the cost of maintaining the transformer, Promised Land has refuted the claims.
The situation has led Ashamu East Chairman Toyin Saka to call on the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company to intervene and resolve the impasse.
Accusing Promised Land of betraying the load sharing arrangement, Saka told Echonews that both communities agreed to share the electricity and the cost of repairs following the purchase and installation of the transformer but it reneged.
The CDA chairman, Mr. Toyin Saka, while speaking to ECHONEWS, explained that the issue began to surface when the transformer they purchased and energised between 2014-2015 began to develop faults repeatedly within a year due to overloading as a result of increase in the population of residents of Promises Land.
He said there are more users who depend on the transformer in the other community but are not ready to pay for the maintenance of the transformer.
Saka said rather than contributing towards maintaining the transformer jointly purchased by the communities as agreed, the neighbouring community resulted to contribution to buy a new transformer for themselves not long after they were pronounced as a new CDA.
According to him, despite neglecting the maintenance, the residents under the new CDA still depend on the transformer which resulted in load-shedding on a 2-day on, 1-day off basis.
He explained further that the woes of the community were compounded after the declaration of Ikeja Electric that its electricity act does not permit it to help facilitate newly purchased transformer which has hindered Promise Land CDA from being disconnected from the old transformer.
He noted that the community needs N1,000,000 to facilitate the transformer before Ikeja Electric can help energise it.
He, therefore, appealed to the distribution company to help facilitate the newly purchased transformer at Promise Land and to make sure the community is disconnected from the old transformer at Ashamu East community.
He said that Promised Land community was disconnected from
the transformer due to the attitude of its residents
However, contradicting Saka’s statement, the Chairman of Promise Land CDA, Engr. Ebenezer Ekwebelem, disclosed that the CDA persistently contributed the supposed maintenance fees but were only negligent towards honouring joint meetings from Ashamu East CDA over the issue of overloading.
He said having written to IKEDC, they were informed that the distribution company can only assist with free metering.
He appealed to Ashamu East CDA, philanthropists and IKEDC to support them financially to facilitate their own transformer, saying their CDA has no financial capacity to finish the project.
