Plateau Youths Protest 11-Year Power Outage in Miango, Demand JEDC Accountability

Irigwe youths accuse JEDC and a community energy company of keeping Miango town in darkness for 11 years, citing a debt dispute that has ballooned to nearly ₦195 million despite partial repayment.

Jos, Plateau State — September 1, 2026

Concerned Irigwe youths have accused the Jos Electricity Distribution Company (JEDC) and a community-backed energy company of prolonging an 11-year blackout in Miango town, Bassa Local Government Area of Plateau State, demanding immediate restoration of power and full accountability over the circumstances behind the disconnection.

Speaking at a press conference at the Plateau NUJ Secretariat in Jos, group spokesperson Bitrus Adamu Izhi said Miango, located roughly 20 miles west of Jos, has remained without electricity since JEDC disconnected the town in 2015 over disputed consumer debts.

According to Izhi, Miango's registered customer population stood at 682 before a December 2016 intervention by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), at which point the outstanding post-privatisation debt was put at ₦51.4 million. Following NERC's intervention, JEDC reduced the debt to ₦38 million as of June 2017, with consumers subsequently remitting ₦28 million toward that balance.

Izhi alleged that a community energy company, set up, he said, without the knowledge or consent of consumers, was designated as JEDC's sole intermediary for collecting bills, and that JEDC then unilaterally suspended individual consumer accounts in favour of a single collective account managed by that intermediary. 

He said every attempt to get answers from the responsible committee over the past 11 years has failed, and disclosed that as of May 2023, the total amount JEDC claims is owed by the Miango Community Energy Project Enterprise had ballooned to over ₦194.9 million, more than five times the original disputed debt.

The youths described the prolonged blackout as a "self-inflicted injury" stemming from opaque billing arrangements rather than any inherent infrastructure failure, and are calling for transparency into how the debt has grown so dramatically despite partial repayment. 

The protest adds an economic and infrastructural dimension to Miango's long-documented struggles, a community that has also weathered years of deadly Irigwe-Fulani communal violence in the same Bassa LGA.