For residents of several parts of Calabar, the Cross River State capital, who have experienced epileptic public power supply or a clear absence of public power supplied by Power Holdings Company of Nigeria, PHCN, their fortunes are not about to change because www.calitown.com investigations show that a whooping 80 failed electricity transformers in the city are at the centre of the no light situation.
Documents and facts made available to www.calitown.com further reveal that corruption on the part of agencies responsible for tacking this problem may have aggravated the no light situation. A case in point is the bungled role the State Electricity Agency , SEA, played when state governor, Liyel Imoke demanded that a memo be forwarded to him and cost attached so that the state government can help in the procurement and replacement of most of the transformers. A source within government circles say “the Agency did that memo and made sure the cost submitted was an outrageous sum of more than N2 billion. This glaring anomaly put off the governor who was battling to pay workers salaries. I am sure if the Agency had brought forth a realistic figure, government would have responded positively”.
PHCN staff too were fingered for their role in the destruction of most of this transformers. “Specifically, the people go around overloading transformers and collect money for this bad act. When most of those transformers become overloaded, the weight of electricity consumption destroys the transformers”, one source said.
Residents of a large part of Ikot Ishie, a densely populated part of Calabar also revealed that “when the transformers go bad, the PHCN people will come and ask for money from us before repairs or replacement can be effected. It is an unfortunate situation but what options do we have”, he asked.
For now it does’nt look like the transformers will be replaced soon.
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