By Francis Sadhere
Pandemonium broke out today at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Warri, Delta State as an epileptic patient suddenly slumped down and started convulsing while queueing to pay his electricity bills.
According to an eyewitness account who spoke to our correspondent under unanimity, the long queue might have contributed to the patient’s collapse.
He said the epileptic patient has been standing in the queue for more than three hours waiting patiently for his turn when he suddenly collapsed and started jerking.
“When some people saw him collapsed to the ground they started running thinking that it was something else that was wrong with the man. It was after a while that they started coming back to the queue again when they discovered that he was an epileptic patient,” said the eye witness.
When our correspondent got to the screen of the incident, the epileptic patient was seen sitting on the ground recovering, while sympathizers were attending to him.
It took several minutes for the epileptic patient to recover himself and gain consciousness before he was finally allowed to buy some units for his prepaid meter while several other customers continued to wait for their turn.
Those who spoke to our correspondent blamed what happened to the epileptic patient to the untold hardship the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) has continued to inflict on it’s customers.
They said BEDC has continued make the people of Warri and it’s environs suffer unnecessarily as the distribution company has refused to make payment for prepaid meters easy for their customers.
They lamented that payment of prepaid meters is concentrated only at Fidelity Bank and UBA Bank branches at the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Warri, adding that if the situation does not improve, they may resort to other means of having power.
They, therefore, called on the BEDC to make these payments easy for customers to averts situation like what happened to the epileptic patient.
