Residents of Ikot Abasi in Ikot Abasi Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, on Monday, decried the persistent power outage in the area, urging the state government to come to their aid.
In separate interviews with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the residents said they had been in darkness for over 10 months.
They said the development had imposed a lot of hardship as most them depended on generators which cost a lot of money to sustain.
Mr Etim Bassey, a hotelier in Ikot Abasi, said that the whole town had been in darkness for the past 10 years.
Bassey attributed the blackout to the comatose state of the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (ALSCON) which had been supplying electricity to the community as part of its corporate social responsibility.
He said that the development had affected a lot of businesses in the area, making it unpleasant for people to stay in the area.
Earlier, Anastasia Voronkova, the company’s Media Manager, said ALSCON was providing free electricity and clean drinking water to over 30,000 residents in the local community around Ikot Abasi.
She said that the company had suffered losses of about 60 million dollars due to disruptions in gas supply.
Voronkova said that plans for a backup gas pipeline was not realisable earlier than 2016, thus prolonging plans by the company to return to productivity.
“The possibility of connecting ALSCON’s gas-fired power plant to the national grid is another subject of long-term talks between the Nigerian authorities and ALSCON.
“Unfortunately, the dialogue has become long-running, despite preliminary agreements and obligations, the authorities do not have enough support to connect the plant to the national grid,” the media manager said.
Voronkova said that ALSCON was awaiting the settlement of the dispute over uninterrupted gas supply and connection to the national grid.
According to her, once the dispute is settled, the company will restart production and increase the volume of social support to the local community.
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