The entire premises of Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan, have been thrown into darkness for the past three weeks. The development has hampered businesses of many private occupants of the first sports arena in West Africa.
The power outage, according to staff of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company who does not want his name in print, came as a result of the backlog of arrears payment running into N.4m400.000 which the South/West zone one of National Sports Commission (NSC) that has its headquarters situated inside the stadium could not give a definite time to offset it.
“Our businesses have been greatly injured by this power outage that had entered its 20th days now, and no one has offered any clue as to how and when the problem would be resolved with the IBDEC. The debt owed is quite heavy for what an individual here can settle.
“We are only pleading with the NSC to come to our aid, and bail us out of this mess that we have found ourselves for the past three weeks,” a shopowner who sought to lie low said.
It would be recalled that the leadership of the NSC zonal offices have disclosed that the periodical grants that come from Abuja basically for maintenance of facilities are no more forthcoming for the past 14 months.
When contacted the stadium manager, Mr. Ahmed Jumare, said the outage was due to an internal fault that occurred within the stadium and not any huge debt, promising that the problem would soon be solved.
