The Management of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) Plc has reiterated its commitment to improving power supply, enhancing metering services, and addressing customer concerns in Offa and its environs.
According to the Lead Media Relations, Daniel Adugbo this assurance was made during a town hall meeting held in Offa, Kwara State, which brought together community leaders, religious and advocacy groups, youth representatives, business stakeholders, and other influential individuals.
Speaking at the event, the Regional Head, Kwara Region, Engr. Oluwatoyin Akinyosoye, explained that the meeting was part of IBEDC’s ongoing customer engagement initiatives aimed at fostering transparency, trust, and collaboration.
“We understand that effective communication is vital to service improvement. This town hall meeting is not only to inform our customers about our efforts to enhance supply reliability, metering, and billing, but also to listen to their concerns and, where possible, address them immediately,” Engr. Akinyosoye stated.
He further highlighted that energy theft and vandalism as well as non-payment of electricity bill, remain major challenges confronting the company’s ability to deliver stable power supply.
“Every act of energy theft or vandalism affects the entire community. It leads to revenue losses, equipment damage, and prolonged outages. We are therefore appealing to our customers to support IBEDC by protecting electrical installations and reporting any suspicious activity,” he added.
The Business Manager for Offa Business Hub, Mrs. Funmilayo Ibitoye, emphasized the company’s efforts in metering, billing, and fault response.
“We have intensified our metering drive to ensure fair billing and are working to reduce response time to faults. We encourage customers to pay their bills promptly to enable us serve them better,” Mrs. Ibitoye said.
The meeting provided an open forum for customers to express their concerns. Many participants appreciated IBEDC for the engagement initiative but urged the company to address issues of poor power supply, prolonged outages and delay in fault clearing.
A community leader, Chief Abdulrasheed Olatunji, commended the management for the engagement:
“This kind of meeting is commendable because it gives us the chance to speak directly to IBEDC officials. We only ask that the promises made translate into visible improvements in supply and service delivery.”
Another participant, Mrs. Aishat Bello, a businesswoman, appealed for quicker response to faults “We depend on power for our daily businesses, because the cost of running generator is too much. We want IBEDC to improve on the time it takes them to fix transformer faults whenever they occur.”
The customers and company, at the end of the meeting, agreed that mutual understanding and cooperation is essential to achieving reliable electricity supply and sustainable service delivery.