Laolu Elijah

The blackout at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, has now ended as the management of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company yesterday restored power to the teaching hospital.

The restoration of power to the hospital was confirmed to Vanguard by the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Professor Jesse Abiodun Otegbayo.

Recall that the hospital had been thrown into darkness after the distribution company cut off their power following a huge debt running into millions of Naira.

The strained customer-vendor relationship prompted the Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu to pay a working visit to the hospital during which he brokered peace between the two managements. IBEDC then promised to restore power within 24–48 hours.

Initially, when Vanguard asked him if energy had been restored to the hospital, he answered in affirmative but added that a fault had been discovered outside the hospital which the IBEDC team were trying to fix.

Prof Otegbayo said in a terse message, “Yes, but they have reported fault outside the hospital which they are attending to.

Some moments later, the CMD confirmed it that the power had been restored.

He said, “IBEDC power is now on in University College Hospital, Ibadan.”

Prior to the reconnection, the CMD explained that when the power was cut, the management tried to reduce the effects by solarizing some emergency areas in the hospital.

Professor Otegbayo said, “The management applied some temporary measures to cushion the effects of the power outage.

“We have installed solar inverters to major areas in the hospital such as Intensive Care Unit, Children’s Emergency Ward, Endoscopic Unit, Cardiac unit and others.

“All these wards have solar inverters to provide energy so that the wards and patients will not be in darkness. Our short term measures will continue to stabilize the emergency areas. Some of our underground cables have been there for more than 50 years. That’s not within the budget of the hospital.

But, the public doesn’t know what we are passing through.”

The hospital had dismissed a report that some patients brought in their generators as an alternative.

The management clarified further that anyone who came to the hospital at night would see that some departments had lights.