UPDATE: Residents, business owners groan over weeks of power outage in Makurdi

Residents of Makurdi the Benue state capital have raised concern over the several days of black out currently being witnessed in parts of the state capital.

Parts of the state capital had in the last one month witnessed epileptic power supply without explanation from the management of Jos Electricity Distribution Company.

The areas badly affected by the outage includes Gboko road and New GRA communities, Welfare Quarters, Judges’ Quarters, Wadata area of the town among others.

Some residents of Gboko Road and Makurdi New GRA communities of the town who spoke to newsmen on the matter, expressed shock that no official of JED deemed it necessary to explain to consumers why electricity supply to the area had been off for about two weeks.

One of the residents, Johnson Haar who claimed he resides and owns a barber’s shop at the New GRA area of the town lamented that he had suffered losses over the unending power outage in his community.

He said, “for one week now, we have not had electricity supply after the last heavy downpour in the town. And before then we had no light for about one week also. Aside this we have not been enjoying steady power supply and no official of JED has considered it necessary to explain to the consumers why we are in darkness.

“Our businesses have been crippled because of lack of electricity supply and runing on generators have never helped any business rather it is killing our bussineses.”

Another resident, Terkimbi Utser who resides at the Welfare Quarters area of the town said the area had witnessed blackout for close to two week without any explanation from the officials of JED “but in the next few days day will bring us outrageous bills.

“It is painful that we are suffering this because nobody holds them accountable for the very poor services they are rendering to electricity consumers.

“We are appealing to the President Bola Tinubu-led administration to reconsider the privatisation of the power sector because it has not yielded any positive result. In fact since the privatisation, that sector has gone from bad to worse. We had better services before the privatisation. Many small businesses are packing up because of lack of electricity and we cannot continue like this if we are serious as a nation.”

Efforts by newsmen to reach officials of JED in Makurdi was unsuccessful.