Cross River — Ogoja and Okuku residents in Cross River State have staged peaceful demonstration, apparently reacting to prolonged periods of living without electricity supply from the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). The residents of the these areas while walking round some major streets vowed that they would not pay electricity bills any longer.

The residents who reached the decision on Wednesday, June 4, sent young men on Okada with loudspeakers to announce to those who were not in the meeting that "no one should pay electricity bill again. Any one caught at the PHCN office in the name of paying bill would be fined N10, 000 along with the provision of a live goat".

According to Sebastine Unyi, the Ogoja Youths president, "It is better to stay without electricity, after all in a month of thirty days, we cannot boast of having electricity for six hours. Is it then not better to save the money with which to pay PHCN and buy a generator?".

The youths who threatened to gather all electricity bills for the months of May and burn them if PHCN went ahead to distribute them said it was meaningless to continue to pay the bills because it "amounts to encouraging PHCN to continue to defraud our people".

At the PHCN office Ogoja, the Business Manager, G.N Bavure, was said to have gone to Abakaliki. A source said the fault was not that of Ogoja office of Power Holding Company but from the national electricity distributive office at Osogbo which has drastically reduced the amount of power supply to Ogoja. He said Osogbo does not supply power to Abakaliki, which supplies Ogoja, and without power supply from Abakaliki, there is nothing they can do.

He displayed a memo from the distribution centre at Osogbo dated May 4 which called for limitation of power supply to all power stations across the country owing to "low gas supply to all our Thermal Stations, and low water supply level which is below 2000 level in our hydro station generators, the system is being constantly operated at alert state. This has called for drastic load allocation to all regions in order to sustain the system".

The source said this situation has left Ogoja station with practically no electricity that accounts for the absence of power in the area.