The news filtered in late Sunday evening that residents of Ibafo, Magboro and other communities in Obafemi Owode Local Government Area of Ogun State would embark on a protest on Monday, March 7, 2016, to press home their demand for electricity and other social amenities, which they had been denied for over 10 years.

The protesters kept their word and by 6 am, they had blocked the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, stopping the flow of traffic for several hours. The angry protesters sang solidarity songs, urging the federal government to come to their rescue immediately.

Funsho Olawepo, leader of the group, said the protest would take a drastic turn if the federal government failed to address the needs of the community in the next seven days. “The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company has been dribbling us for the past 10 years and giving all kinds of excuses. But we are here to say enough is enough. We have become a government to ourselves. We provide our own school, hospital, road, drainage, and even police station. We bought our own transformers, cables and poles and we have spent more than N400m and all we have been asking them to do is to give us power and they have refused,” he explained.

According to him, the communities had written letters to the federal, state and local governments without response. He said they similarly wrote to Babatunde Fashola, minister of Power, Works and Housing, recently and he too failed to respond, hence the seven-day ultimatum.