Dozens of angry youths storm IBEDC office to protest power cuts

Dozens of young people from Osogbo stormed the premises of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) on Wednesday to protest what they described as a chronic and unreliable power supply in the Osun State capital and surrounding communities.

The demonstrators arrived in groups, chanting and carrying placards condemning the company’s service delivery. They accused IBEDC of billing customers — through both estimated and prepaid meters — while providing little to no electricity in return.

One protester, who gave his name as Tunde, said residents and business owners had simply had enough. “We cannot continue to pay for darkness,” he said, adding that businesses were collapsing and households were at breaking point. Another demonstrator said many small enterprises had been forced to rely entirely on petrol generators to stay open — a costly alternative at a time of high fuel prices. “We spend more on running generators than we earn daily,” she said.

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The protesters demanded that IBEDC management explain the cause of the outages and provide a concrete timeline for restoring stable electricity. Security personnel were deployed to the scene, while company officials met with a delegation from the group.

IBEDC had acknowledged the crisis a day earlier, on Tuesday, informing customers that reduced energy allocation from the national grid had significantly limited its ability to supply power across the Osun region. The affected areas include Iwo, Ede, Ejigbo, Ikirun, Iree, Ila, Ipetu-Ijesa, and several surrounding communities. The company said it was engaging industry stakeholders to secure better allocation, but that any improvement depended partly on gas availability to power generation companies.

Wednesday’s demonstration is far from an isolated incident. Residents and traders in Osun State have staged similar protests repeatedly in recent years, often locking IBEDC offices until assurances were given or repairs promised. In July 2024, traders in Osogbo barricaded the company’s Old Garage Road office for several hours over high bills and fewer than four hours of daily power. Youths in Ilesa chained shut their local IBEDC office in October that year. Protests followed in Ede in February 2025, in Ikirun in June 2025 — where residents had gone three weeks without electricity — and again in Osogbo in January 2026.

Each time, the pattern has been broadly the same: a protest, a promise, and eventually another protest.