UNIBEN Students Protest Months Of Power Outage

Students of the University of Benin yesterday took to the streets to protest months of power outage in the university’s campus.

The angry students, who have only two weeks until their first semester examination, blocked the ever-busy Benin-Lagos Expressway.

It was gathered that the university was thrown into darkness following the inability to reach an agreement with the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) over a contentious electricity bill.

The management of the institution was said to have expressed discontent after the Benin Disco reportedly made an upward review of the institution’s monthly electricity charges by over 200 per cent.

The monthly bill was said to have jumped from about N80 million to between N200 and N280 million, forcing the university to resort to power generators, as well as rationalisation of power on the two campuses and hostels.

“We only had one hour of electricity every day since this issue started. We are tired of studying in the dark. “We need electricity to read and prepare for our exams.”