Youths of Janruwa and Bagado communities in Kaduna, on Friday barricaded streets in the city to protest over a one year power outage in the area.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the protesters barricaded the Ibrahim Yakowa Road as early as 6 am, causing gridlock for three hours.
Melchizedek Silvanus, who spoke on behalf of the communities, said the protest was necessary as the Kaduna Electric Distribution Company (KEDKO) had failed to remedy the situation.
He explained that the company removed the transformers serving the communities and had failed to provide new ones.
“KEDCO officials removed the transformers without any explanation, and this is this is more than one year ago and so far nothing has been done.
“We have reached out to KEDCO on several occasions with no positive response, which is why we came out to draw the government’s attention to our plight.
“We cannot continue living in the dark.”
NAN reports that situation was later brought under control with the intervention of the Divisional Police Officer for Sabon Tasha, CSP Olalekan Odumosun.
After the intervention, the communities said they would return to the street within three days, if nothing is done.
When contacted, KEDCO’s Head of Corporate Communications, Abdulazeez Abdullahi confirmed that the communities had been without power supply since August 2015.
“On two different occasions, the company took transformers to the community to ensure restoration of power supply, but unfortunately the two transformers failed.
“We wish to assure our customers in Janruwa and other communities having one form of challenge or the other in terms of power supply, that the company is doing everything it can to restore power supply to the communities.
“We will continue to work assiduously to live up to our responsibility of ensuring steady and qualitative power supply to our customers, “ he said.