Hope rises for Olomu people as EDP DESOPADEC moves to end 10 years black-out crisis

Hope of electricity restoration to Olomu Communities that have been in black-out for over a decade rose Thursday as Olorogun Ebenezer Okorodudu, Executive Director, Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission, DESOPADEC, wades in and convened a BEDC-Olomu PGs stakeholders meeting to end the crisis.

Over ten Olomu Communities were thrown into total black-out more than ten years ago following payment disagreement with the Benin Electricity Distribution Company, BEDC.

The BEDC action provoked the Olomu Communities to file an action in court through their lawyer, Olorogun Albert Akpomudje SAN, the matter was later withdrawn following settlement intervention.

Worried by the continued black-out, Okorodudu conveyed a top level meeting of BEDC management and affected Communities Presidents-General in his office.

According to Okorodudu after the meeting, “There has been black-out in eight of the Olomu communities for the past 15 years, and I deemed if fit to reach out to the leadership of the BEDC, Mr. Curtis Nwadei, who decided that we should have a meeting, together with some major stakeholders of Olomu kingdom and the principal officers of the regional BEDC.

“We met, we had a robust interactive session, and the product of that interactive session is that we should set up a committee made up of people from the BEDC and also the communities to form a committee.

“Their assignment is simple, to visit each of these communities to identify areas of challenges, both the transformers, the cables and anything that is critical to the lighting of the communities.

“And of course, that committee have been put together and given the mandate to give a report back to us in two weeks from today, so exactly two weeks from today to converge here to get the report.

“And of course, we are reasoning together. We'll continue to reason together until we get light to all the communities that have been in black-out.” He added.

On his part, BEDC Regional Head, Curtis Nwadei said, “I'm the Head of BEDC Warri region. The region covers 11 local government areas. Olomu Kingdom happens to be one of the areas we cover.

“This meeting is apt, apt in the sense that it falls within the dream of BEDC management to bring back Communities that have been in darkness, like the EDP said, Olomu Kingdom has been out of supply for the past 15 years. So it is a thing of joy that this meeting has been held and the committee has been set up.

“So we wait for the committee to go to the field, come up with exactly what and what went wrong and we work to bring them back to the national grid. So we look forward to the committee report.