Hundreds of youths and older men and women from the Ndokwa area of Delta State on Monday barricaded the Kwale axis of the Ughelli-Asaba expressway in a protest for over 16 years of darkness.

The protesters who chanted songs of grievances and displayed placards with various inscriptions, such as ‘Light Up Ndokwa Nation’, ‘Electricity in Ndokwa Land: Enough is Enough; Nepa No, IPP Yes’, among others, disrupted vehicular movement for several hours as travellers were caught in the gridlock.

They have experienced years of power outages in Kwale and other communities of the Ndokwa nation, demanding the step-down of the Independent Power Plant, Okpai, to provide electricity to their communities.

The people who were dispersed with tear gas by police officers at about 9 am later mobilised and continued with the protest.

One of the protesters, Mr Enubuzor, lamented that the Independent Power Plant, Okpai, had been supplying electricity to over nine states while the host communities had been in darkness for over a decade.

He said, “It is painful that we have something that can generate electricity for us, but we are suffering. Our people are tired of buying fuel to power our generators.

“Most of our leaders are not living with us here to know what we are experiencing. If you look around, there is gas flaring everywhere, and at night, we cannot sleep because of the heat.

“What we are saying is that the leaders should give electricity to Ndokwa. Let them light up Ndokwa so that we can benefit from the IPP.”

Reacting to the protest, the Publicity Secretary of the Ndokwa Neku Union, NNU, the apex social and cultural organisation of the Ndokwa nation, Mr Azuka Odainike, said the union “is not against the protest, but it is the timing that we are against.”

He said the union had on Sunday set up a standing committee on the step-down of power.

He said the union wants to interface with the “protesters which government is already responding to fast-track the step-down of the IPP.

Meanwhile, the Police Public Relations Officer of the State Command, SP. Bright Edafe, said it was not wrong to shoot teargas in a protest that is violent.

“Any protest that people will go and block the highway and burn tires is no longer peaceful. They were burning tires and stoning vehicles,” he said. (The PUNCH)

Update news