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"Six Months of Darkness": Yaba Residents Storm Ikeja Electric Office, Police Deployed as Lagos Blackout Protests Spread
Hundreds of residents from Abule Oja and Abule Ijesha in Yaba, Lagos State, marched to the Igbobi branch office of the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IEDC) on Sunday, April 27, 2026, in a boiling protest over a near-total blackout that has crippled their neighbourhoods for six consecutive months. The demonstrators — a mix of students, landlords, and young adults — carried placards bearing messages such as "Stop the suffering! Restore our light," "#EndTheBlackout," "Band B = 16 hours daily. Deliver it!", and "Power is a right, not a privilege." At least five police patrol vehicles were deployed to the scene, with officers attempting to disperse the crowd before one officer later apologised after being chastised by his superiors.
The protest, captured in video clips shared by Arise Television and widely circulated on social media, represents the latest eruption of public anger in a city that is increasingly defined not by its commercial vitality but by the hum of generators and the frustration of residents who pay electricity bills for power they never receive. The aggrieved residents claim they have suffered "discriminatory power distribution and systemic corruption," with supply reportedly as low as one hour every five days — a situation that has persisted since November 2025 despite repeated complaints and visits to the Ikeja Electric office. As one protester told the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ): "We have been patient for months. The situation is affecting businesses, food storage and daily life."
The Protest: A Community's Boiling Point
The demonstrators gathered at the Igbobi branch of Ikeja Electric after weeks of what community leaders described as "futile engagements" with the distribution company. FIJ had reported in February and March 2026 on how students and residents in these communities struggled as epileptic power supply plagued them, with electricity restored briefly — sometimes not lasting up to an hour or two — before being cut off for days. Some residents had made multiple trips to the Ikeja Electric office to complain, but the lack of a lasting resolution finally pushed the community to the streets.
At the protest ground, some representatives of the protesters met with an Ikeja Electric manager who told them that the major issue began in November 2025 due to the vandalisation of transmission cables. The manager also explained that only one feeder served the communities, and the available electricity was insufficient to serve all feeders fully. Because of the limited supply, the company rotated power across areas through load shedding — meaning some locations received little or no electricity at all when supply was too low. The manager gave a two-week timeframe for improvement, but residents remain sceptical. "We want consistent and stable electricity in reasonable supply, not minutes. Further delay without improvement is unacceptable," a protester stated.
There were tense moments during the demonstration. One police officer attempted to harass protesters before apologising after his superiors intervened. "For the policeman, he has apologised. His superior and colleagues have chastised him. He also seems sorry for what he did," a protester told FIJ. The police presence — at least five patrol vehicles — reflected the heightened sensitivity around public protests in Nigeria, even when they are peaceful and focused on basic service delivery failures.
A City in the Dark: The Broader Power Crisis
The Yaba protest is not an isolated event. It is the latest in a series of demonstrations that have swept across Lagos and other states in 2026. In March, residents of Fadeyi, Gowon Estate in Egbeda, and communities in Osun, Edo, and Oyo states all staged protests over poor electricity supply. Just last week, residents of the Maya Olorijo Estate in Ikorodu protested an 18-month power outage, marching to the Ikeja Electric Business District in the Alogba area with placards reading "18 months in darkness, killing Olorijo." That crisis began when a faulty transformer was removed by Ikeja Electric for repairs on January 13, 2025, and was never returned — a devastating failure of service delivery that has destroyed livelihoods and left businesses dependent on expensive fuel-powered generators for more than a year and a half.
The root causes of the crisis extend far beyond vandalised cables and absent transformers. For months, power supply across Nigeria has significantly deteriorated due to a massive drop in the operation of thermal power plants. Generation companies have blamed their inability to pay gas suppliers on the federal government's non-payment of a backlog of electricity subsidy costs. The power generation companies claim the federal government owes them approximately ₦6 trillion in unfunded electricity subsidies; the Tinubu administration reviewed the claim and concluded that the actual figure is ₦3.3 trillion. On April 6, 2026, President Tinubu approved the ₦3.3 trillion payment plan as a full and final settlement of legacy debts accumulated between February 2015 and March 2025. Yet even with the bailout in motion, the power situation has yet to improve for millions of Nigerians.
Ikeja Electric's Response: Vandalism, Load Shedding, and a "Severe Gas Shortage"
Ikeja Electric has attributed the crisis facing communities like Abule Oja and Abule Ijesha to multiple converging factors — some within its control, others beyond it. In a public notice dated March 23, 2026, the company admitted that a "severe nationwide gas shortage" was crippling electricity supply across its franchise area. The vandalisation of transmission cables in November 2025 compounded the problem for the Yaba communities specifically. The company's explanation that a single feeder serves the affected neighbourhoods — and that load shedding is the only mechanism available to manage inadequate supply — highlights the infrastructure constraints that have made consistent power delivery a logistical impossibility for millions of Lagosians.
At the Yaba protest, the manager's promise of improvement within two weeks was received with the weary scepticism of a community that has heard similar assurances before. The protesters dispersed peacefully, but their message was unambiguous: patience has run out.
A Community's Patience, A Government's Test
The Yaba protest is about more than six months of darkness in two neighbourhoods. It is about a social contract that is fraying in communities across Nigeria — communities that pay bills to distribution companies, observe the formalities of engagement, and are met with explanations that range from vandalised cables to gas shortages to load shedding schedules, none of which make their lights come on. The two-week deadline given by Ikeja Electric's manager will expire in early May. Whether Abule Oja and Abule Ijesha will see the restoration of stable electricity by then is now a question that the company, and the regulators who oversee it, must answer. For the residents who marched on Sunday, there is no more patience left to exhaust. Only darkness.
Stay tuned to Unuevbo TV for more in-depth reporting on Nigeria's electricity crisis and the communities demanding accountability from their service providers.
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