“We’re running on generators, not electricity” — FCT residents lament

• Abuja satellite towns are experiencing multi-day blackouts.
• Small business owners say outages are destroying livelihoods.
• AEDC blames limited grid allocation and promises improvement.

For many residents of Abuja’s satellite communities, electricity has quietly stopped being a utility and started feeling like a rare privilege, one that appears for a few hours, disappears for days, and leaves businesses scrambling in between.

Across Pegi, Piwoyi, Kubwa, and Dawaki, residents say worsening outages are disrupting daily life, draining incomes, and forcing small traders to rely on generators they can barely afford to fuel.

“Three to four days in darkness”

In Pegi, Kuje Area Council, civil servant Augustine Okoro says blackouts now stretch across entire weekends.

“We can stay three to four days without light,” he said. “It’s hard to understand how so much money goes into this sector and people are still living like this.”

For Okoro and many others, frustration has shifted from inconvenience to policy, with growing calls for the federal government to revisit Nigeria’s electricity privatisation model.

Small businesses running on diesel and hope

Along Airport Road in Piwoyi, trader Idris Wada says he has practically shut down his sachet water and soft drink business because he cannot afford a generator.

“Most business owners here depend on generators,” he said. “I don’t have money for that, so my business has stopped.”

In the same community, welder Okon Edem says he now works whenever power randomly appears, even in the middle of the night, to meet customer deadlines. On other days, he burns through diesel just to stay open.

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In Kubwa and Biazhin, residents say the unstable power supply is especially brutal on cold room operators and frozen food sellers.

Ann Okotie, who runs a cold storage business, said electricity now comes irregularly, sometimes for only a few hours every couple of days, leaving her stock vulnerable to spoilage.

Another resident, Elizabeth Okunsun, said her area had gone nearly a week without power, and when it returned, it barely lasted three hours.

“The situation is collapsing small businesses,” she said. “People are losing their livelihoods.”

Disco blames grid shortages

The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) has attributed the outages to limited power supply from the national grid, saying several areas across its franchise zones are experiencing reduced allocation.

In a public notice, the company said its technical teams were monitoring the situation and working to restore normal service once the grid supply improves, while apologising for the inconvenience caused to homes and businesses.

For residents, however, the issue has moved beyond inconvenience into economic survival. Across satellite towns, generators have become substitutes for public infrastructure, while diesel costs continue to rise.

As frustration builds, many say what Abuja needs is not just better apologies, but a serious rethink of how electricity is delivered in a capital city still learning how to stay powered.