Water vendors gain as power outage bites harder in Yola

From Umar Dankano,Yola.

Some commercial water vendors are making gains out of the prevailing dearth of electricity supply resulting to power outage affecting other economic and social sectors in Adamawa State capital and its environs.

Peoples Daily investigation revealed that, Water vendors services is becoming increasingly out of the reach of the poor and masses in the ancient town of Yola and Jimeta, the state’s capital.

As a result of the biting power outage which started in the build up to the just concluded Ramadan fasting, the water vendors whose services have become so essential are now the lords of the manor calling the shots from their vantage positions and smiling richly to the banks.

Vendors, hitherto offering 12 kegs of water for between N300 and N400 depending on the particular part of the city, now accept no less than N500, where water is usually the cheapest to find.

Within the twin Jimeta and Yola Towns, which constitute the main Yola capital territory, public tap water is hardly available, placing the job of water supply in the hands of water vendors who supply residents.

The vendors take the water to residents’ doorsteps in kegs packed in two-wheel hand trucks.

The current increase in price was said to have arisen from an increase in the cost the vendors incur to draw water from the commercial borehole owners, who themselves complain of having to pump water to their overhead tank using power generators.

Some of the worst affected areas include Mbamoi, Damare Polo, Lamido Palace area, Yola Bypass, Yolde Pate, in Yola South local government area; as well as Jimeta Old Market, Upper and Lower Lugere, Old GRA, Demsawo, among other places, where 12 kegs of water cost between N500 and N800.

The power outage in Yola has also meant much hardship in the face of sweltering heat, which began in the city in March and is expected to remain up to the end of May.

The Yola Electricity Distribution Company (YEDC) had informed its customers that its 33KV feeders in Jimeta, Jambutu, and Yola Town were faulty, hence the long days of blackout.

The company added in its Facebook post that a team of engineers were working round the clock with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to restore the power supply.

There were 222.6 million telephone subscribers in Nigeria as at end of 2022, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.

The 2022 figure showed an increase of 27.1 million subscribers over the 195.5 million subscribers recorded at the end of 2021.

The NBS stated the figures in its Telecoms Data: Active Voice and Internet per State, Porting and Tariff Information report for the last quarter of 2022, released in Abuja on Monday.

The report showed that the figure for the last quarter of 2022 represented a 13.87 per cent rise in voice subscriptions on a year-on-year basis.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the report showed growth stood at 4.89 per cent.

The NBS also recorded a total of 154.9 million active internet subscribers at the end of 2022 compared to 142 million recoded at the end of 2021.

“This represents a 9.07 per cent increase in active internet subscriptions year-on-year, while on a quarter-on-quarter basis, internet subscription grew by 1.35 per cent,’’ it stated.

On state-by-state analysis, the report showed that Lagos State had the highest number of active telephone users in 2022 at 26.5 million, followed by Ogun with 13 million users.

Kano State came third with 12.4 million telephone users.

The report showed that Bayelsa had the least number of telephone users at 1.6 million subscribers, followed by Ebonyi and Ekiti with 1.9 million users and two million users, respectively.

It also showed that Lagos

State had the highest number of internet users at 18.7 million subscribers, followed by Ogun with 9.2 million subscribers and Kano State with 8.5 million subscribers.