By Oludamisi Ojo
Many people are accusing you of not doing a lot to resuscitate electricity in your constituency despite being a major source of revenue to the federal and Ondo state governments as an oil-producing locality that has been in total darkness for several years back. What are you doing to solve the problem?

Tofowomo said that, on the blackouts. I visited the Omotosho power plant as a Senator-elect in 2019. I had an interactive session with them on the way out of the age-long darkness.

Consequently, I met with the management of BEDC in 2020 with the representatives of affected communities led by the Petr of Ode Aye and we discussed how to tackle the power outage in many communities as well as the issuance of prepaid meters which hindered the supply of power to Ode-Aye, Igbokoda, and some streets in Okitipupa town because the affected areas were having electricity on their transformers but they have no electricity in their homes. To the glory of God, the meeting was successful. Today, BEDC has released a power supply to metered customers in Ode Aye, Igbokoda, and some streets in Okitipupa.

Q: Up till now, many communities are still in total blackout there, what is the way out of it?.
A: The issues of the affected communities that were yet to be energized under the affected local governments were also discussed. But BEDC officially complained that the 132kv line operated by TCN from Osogbo to Ondo Transmission station is overloaded because it is only one of the 30mva transformers that are currently working and the entire Ondo South is dependent on it.

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Q: How?

A: What happened was that an attempt to transfer all locations into the one working TCN transformer resulted in a severe voltage drop to Ondo South and the same could not be sustained any longer. Hence, I started following up with the timely completion and installation of the Erinje Transmission substation as the lasting solution to reconnect all the communities in the five affected local governments of Ondo South for an uninterrupted power supply.

I moved a motion on the floor of the Senate and I engaged the honorable Minister of Niger Delta handling the project to demand a release of funds to the contractor so that he could complete his work on the project. I also visited the site of the project on two occasions to assess the work following the little progress recorded.

Today, the Erinje Transmission substation is 95 percent completed and efforts are currently ongoing to ensure the job is 100% completed. I also met with the CBN on this matter to open the last LETTER OF CREDIT for the contractor to complete the work. I can boldly say that with this effort, with the minister’s assurances as well, and with the commitment of the contractor, electricity would be fully restored to Ondo South before December this year.