Sola Adeyemo 
Three weeks after supply of electricity to the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State was disconnected by the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) over N495m accumulated debt, workers at the hospital have suspended all night shift duties forthwith.
Described as down-scaling strategy in which they will only be working from 8.00 am to 4.00pm every day, the Chairman of the Joint Action Committee of the Institution, Oludayo Olabampe, said “the workers will continue to work from 8am to 4pm until electricity is restored to the hospital”.
The IBEDC, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024, disconnected UCH from its electricity supply, thus plunging the tertiary institution into blackout. The management had been using inverters, solar power supply and generators to carry out some of its medical activities, leading to initial protest by the workers.
Insisting that no worker would be available to attend to patients in the evenings, Olabampe said, “Up till now, light has not been restored. So, we have scaled down our activities. We are to work between 8.am and 4. pm every day.
“We have said that if the light is not restored as of yesterday (Tuesday), we will scale down our activities and we have done that since yesterday. That is the latest. We are now in the third week”, he said.
The management of the UCH through its Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mrs Funmilayo Adetuyibi, had however defended the debt issue, saying that the N495m was an accumulation of debt owed the IBEDC right from the time of the predecessor of the present Chief Medical Director.
Her words “the present UCH administration, led by Prof. Jesse Otegbayo, assumed office on March 1, 2019 and inherited over N27 million as at Feb. 27, 2019. It had since ensured the monthly payment of bills brought by IBEDC, as well as, settling the backlog of bills inherited from previous administrations”.
Following meetings and correspondences exchanged between the two organizations, Adetuyibi added that the IBEDC asked the hospital to pay N250m to avoid disconnection, but it could not meet the demand, thus resulting in the disconnection.
