Electricity supply in Arepo and environs is increasingly becoming epileptic, writes AKINLOLU AKINPELUMI
For millions of Nigerians, electricity is not something they simply rely on. It is something they keep waiting for. The light comes. It goes. Residents ask when it will return. Engineers are called. A fault is identified. Repairs are made. Power returns—only for the cycle to begin again hours or days later.
This has become familiar in Arepo, a fast-growing community along the Lagos–Ogun axis. In recent months, residents have experienced repeated outages involving transformers, feeders, transmission supply and other parts of the electricity network. The community has repeatedly engaged Ikeja Electric, sought technical explanations and followed efforts to restore supply.
It would be easy to frame this as frustrated residents versus Ikeja Electric. But the bigger question is: What happens when a community grows faster than the infrastructure serving it?
Arepo’s experience suggests that Nigeria’s electricity crisis is not simply about generating more power. It is also about whether transmission and distribution infrastructure can reliably deliver that power to consumers.
