Students of the University of Ibadan suspended their protest against the 82-day blackout in the University College Hospital (UCH), Alexander Brown Hall and Ayodele Falase Hall on Wednesday.
The student union leaders decided to resume the protest if power is not restored on Monday.
This happened after Oba Adedire Adewole Solomon, a Housing Department staff from the Ibadan Federal Secretariat, promised to speak with the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) for a solution.
According to an undergraduate student who wanted to be referred to as John, Solomon said that the students should expect a restoration of power by Friday.
READ ALSO: UI Students to Protest Months-Long Power Outage in College Hospital
“The place (Federal Secretariat) was meant to be the final stop for the protest. The man is supposedly head of housing at the Secretariat. Someone else had spoken to us prior but the crowd was not responsive,” John told FIJ.
“As soon as he approached the crowd, the first thing he said was that by Friday, we should expect power, and then students doubted but he kept reassuring them. Then, he spoke to hall chairpersons including ABH and Falase chairpersons, and the students union leaders.
“They submitted a petition to him. He also collected their numbers. There was a promise that they would keep checking in. The students asked what would be the consequence. But then, he only kept reassuring. But from the look of things, the protest would resume if the Friday deadline is not met.”
Students Protesting at the Secretariat, Ibadan. Credit: ABH Press
FIJ asked Bolaji Aweda, the president of the University of Ibadan Students Union, about the Federal Housing staff who convinced the students to suspend the protest. Aweda said he would have to check the man’s designation later to know.
“We have not had light for 82 days, and so, when he asked us for two days; two days compared to 82 days is a very short time. We gave a conditional suspension that if power is not back by Monday, we are back,” Aweda told FIJ on Wednesday.
UI, UCH Jointly Owe an Accumulated N373. 8 Million Electricity Fee
The management of the UCH is different from the UI management, but some UI hostels like ABH, which is a UI undergraduate hall and the Falase Hall which serves UI postgraduate students, are located in UCH.
From Aweda’s explanations, UCH pays the electricity for itself and UI to IBEDC.
“For a fact, UI has some facilities in UCH, so both are stakeholders. The UCH management is the direct customer to IBEDC. So, when UI wants to pay, they pay to UCH and then UCH pays to IBEDC. So, we can’t query the UCH management, we are not under them. We can only query the University of Ibadan management,” Aweda explained.
READ ALSO: Month-Long Power Outage Forces UCH Doctors to Perform Surgeries With Phone Lights
“In all of the discussions, it was years of non-payment of electricity fees. And the University of Ibadan has shown readiness again and again to pay off their own part of the bill, so UCH is the defaulter. And in all of this, the University of Ibadan cannot pay IBEDC directly. The bill is N373. 8 million. IBEDC is asking them to pay half of the money for them to be reconnected.”
Aweda claimed that the owed electricity bills were an accumulation from 2023.
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