October 7, 2021 by Oluwatosin Omojuyigbe
Residents of Magboro, Makogi, Oke-Afa, Ibafo and Orimerimun, in the Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State, have been thrown into darkness by the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company.
PUNCH Metro gathered that electricity supply to the communities was disconnected after some residents placed fetish items at the isolator switch of the IBEDC in the Magboro area.
Our correspondent learnt that some yet-to-be-identified persons on Saturday placed a sacrifice at the switch and also chained the electrical gadget.
The President of the Magboro Movement on IBEDC, Moses Omoniyi, said nobody knew the identities of the people that placed the sacrifice in the area.
He said, “When the isolator changeover is pulled up, there will be power, and when it is pulled down, it means there won’t be electricity. That is how Magboro has been supplied power by the electricity company.
“However, on Saturday evening, when the isolator switch was up and there was electricity, some people dropped a sacrifice there. They also chained the switch to keep the electricity on. They placed the sacrifice at the bottom. A palm tree leaf and some charms were placed on the chain.
“But now, the issue is that no one can go there to pull the switch down, because no one knows who put the sacrifice there.
“As soon as IBEDC discovered that they could not pull the isolator switch down, they authorised that power be switched off from Oke-Aro. The whole Magboro, Makogi, Oke-Afa, Ibafo 1, Ibafo 2, Orimerimun and all the companies using the electricity have not got power since Sunday.
“If we know the people that put the sacrifice there, we will have to appeal to them to take it away so we can have a way forward. I believe our traditional rulers are also making efforts to know who put it there; so it’s until they see who put it there that we can move forward.”
Another resident, Olaniyi Bamidele, who noted that none of the residents could have placed the sacrifice at the isolator switch, claimed that he suspected foul play on the part of the IBEDC.
He said, “The last time they brought power was Saturday and Sunday morning and we were supposed to have power on Monday because we run on shifts. There was no power on Monday till evening when we got a message on WhatsApp that some people padlocked the isolator switch that would be used to turn on the electricity and that as the sacrifice was put there, the IBEDC said they could not energise power until it is removed.
“We don’t know who put the sacrifice there, but from my point of view, Magboro people cannot put sacrifice there. The outage has affected us a lot because there is no power to pump water.
“We want IBEDC to take us back to the old timetable of two days on and one day off and we also want prepaid meters because some parts of Magboro were given meters last month.”
A resident of Magboro, Oyebola Olufasakin, said power supply in the community had been awful.
“Can you imagine having eight hours of electricity in three days? IBEDC is taking us for granted. When the youth decided that we would not pay for the electricity that we did not enjoy, some old people went to pay behind. The CDC too has been bribed because they are not allowing us to make headway. Instead of them speaking in unison that this is what we want, they are the ones saying it’s the youth that are disturbing the peace of the community. The solution to this issue is for IBEDC to go and we will go back to when we had no power and we will look for another distribution company,” he added.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the isolator switch was still chained and the sacrifice at the same spot, while residents continued to suffer outage.
The IBEDC’s Media Relations Officer, Busolami Tunwase, could not be reached for comment as of the time of filing this
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