Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has thrown half of the State capital, Calabar South local government area of Cross River State to darkness. No reason has been given yet by the company. Close to a week now, the area has been in darkness. DAILY POST findings reveal increasing criminal activities and cult operations in the State following the development.
DAILY POST gathered that cult and cult related activities, including armed robbery and kidnapping strive in the state as a result of darkness and the people are now living in perpetual fear.
The power outage has also affected social, economic and political life of the people. Social gathering such as football, parties, and night vigil can no longer take place. Businessmen and women that make their living from selling of foodstuff, restaurant and beer parlours operators have all shut down their businesses.
As at last count, over six suspected cult members have been killed and most of the attacks are done in the night particularly in the area darkness is noted. Similarly, rate of criminal activities have also increase as thieves burgled stores and residential houses as well as removed batteries in vehicles.
“For a week or more, Calabar South local government area has been thrown into darkness as PHED denied the residents electricity supply.” Chief Effiom Okon lamented
Sadly, night vigils and other meetings ended abruptly for fear of unexpected since there was no electricity. A cool store operator who gave his name as Nathaniel Udo Akpan lamented the outage of electricity in the state capital explaining that the action has caused him untold hardship and losses estimated at several thousands of Naira.
In a separate interaction with our correspondent, these artisans expressed sadness as they could not meet up with the demand of their customers and appealed to power holding company to come to their aides, “We could not meet up again. We have explained and tired to our customers and not everybody understand even when they saw that the fault is not from us”
When our correspondent contacted the Corporate Affairs Manager, John Onyi on phone on Thursday, he said he was at a meeting and when a text message was sent to him, he said he was going to contact the Business Manager in Calabar for the details. He, however, called to inform us that the outage was only yesterday. He admitted that the fault was from a feeder but because of heavy downpour the fault could not be rectify.
When confronted with the information that the outage was not just yesterday and that it was close to a week, he said it could be a fault in the transformer, “It was only last night that our feeder tripped off at around 9pm. It is raining heavily and because of safety, our men cannot trace it now and as soon as the rains step down, the fault will be rectified. Sadly, if there are fault in other areas, it could be as a result of transformer problem,” he said.
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