By Oriri Peter

The attention of the Management of Jos Electricity Distribution Plc has been drawn to insinuations being peddled by a group of persons that the crises between Otukpo (Idoma) and Obi (Igede) people of Benue State that have culminated in the destruction of property were orchestrated by the company.

In a statement issued by the Head of Cooperate Communications, Dr. Friday Adakole Elijah noted that the Jos Electricity Distribution Plc wishes to state categorically that the crisis was not occasioned by its operations.

It is a truism that in an attempt to detect faults in our networks whenever they occurred, the company installed various Isolators at Otobi Ipakangwu, Adum – East, and Deeper Life Camp in Oju. with these Isolators, when there are faults along their routes, they would be opened to enable our technical staff to trace the faults and attends to them expeditiously.

This was the case when our installations were greatly damaged by a windstorm occasioned by a heavy downpour last weekend in Otukpo and its environs.

The destruction puts the entire Otukpo axis of our operations into darkness which necessitated us to isolate the Oju, Ado, Ugbokolo, and Ankpa legs of our operations to enable us to attend to these faults to restore supply to our customers.

The entire Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to resolving the faults and restoring the power supply to Otukpo town. On Monday, our crew proceeded to fault tracing on Otobi Ipakangwu – Obi, Oju routes when they were told to go back that youth from Obi Local Government have been mobilized to go and destroy the Isolator situated in Otobi Ipakangwu. It was the attempts to destroy the Isolator by the Igede youth and the resistance by the Otobi Ipakangwu youth that led to the crisis as the Igede youth insisted that the Isolator must be destroyed.

Before this crisis, the company was not in receipt of any complaint from any quarter about the lack of power supply to the warring communities.

To the best of our knowledge, individuals and communities who have complaints about our operations were constantly enjoyed to complain to the company via any of our offices or social media channels, but that was not the case in this matter as no report to this effect was received officially or unofficially.

Given the foretasted, it is our candid belief that the remote causes of this crisis may be something different from the issue of Isolator or lack of power supply.

We, therefore urge the state government and the security agencies to critically interrogate the situation carefully with the view to unearthing the real causes and proffer lasting solutions that will forestall future occurrences.

JEDplc should take Note of the substandard product they are selling to consumers, as in very bad and toxic energy supplied to the consumers is nothing but a fraud and a bridge of contract between the Supplier and the Consumers. Now we may eventually seek the attention of the Consumer Protection Agency and that of the Standard Organisation of Nigeria. Secondly we may even reach out to the ICPC and the EFCC for the review of Public Utility Privatization and Citizens rights to Public Utility. That is even far off, why can't
we safe our time by just going to Court for redress. Please advice your management to sit up and be more service compact. We need you to improve on your service delivery please.