Upperhill News

Hundreds of youths as well as older men and women from the Ndokwa area of Delta State on Monday blocked the Kwale axis of the Ughelli-Asaba highway to protest over 16 years of darkness.

The protesters chanted songs of grievances and displayed placards with various inscriptions, such as ‘Light Up Ndokwa Nation’, ‘Electricity in Ndokwa Land: Enough is Enough; Nepa No, IPP Yes’, among others,just as they  disrupted vehicular movement for many hours as travellers were caught in traffic gridlock.

They lamented their  experience of  years of power outages in Kwale and other communities of the Ndokwa nation, demanding the step-down of the Independent Power Plant, Okpai, to provide electricity to their communities.

The people who were dispersed with tear gas by men and offiders of the Nigerian Police around  9 am later mobilised to continue with the protest.  

One of the protesters, Mr Enubuzor, who lamented that the Independent Power Plant, Okpai, had been supplying electricity to over nine states, decried that the host communities had been in darkness for over a decade.

“It is painful that we have something that can generate electricity for us, but we are suffering. Our people are tired of buying fuel to power our generators.

“Most of our leaders are not living with us here to know what we are experiencing. If you look around, there is gas flaring everywhere, and at night, we cannot sleep because of the heat.

“What we are saying is that the leaders should give electricity to Ndokwa. Let them light up Ndokwa so that we can benefit from the IPP,” he said.

In his response,  the Publicity Secretary of the Ndokwa Neku Union, NNU, the apex social and cultural organisation of the Ndokwa nation, Mr Azuka Odainike, said the union “is not against the protest, but it is the timing that we are against.”

According to him, the union had on Sunday set up a standing committee on the step-down of power.

“The union wants to interface with the protesters because  government is already responding to fast-track the step-down of the IPP.

Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer of the State Command, SP. Bright Edafe, justified the need to shoot teargas in a protest that is violent.

“Any protest that people will go and block the highway and burn tires is no longer peaceful. They were burning tires and stoning vehicles,” he said.