On Thursday morning, armed military troops attacked employees and other people inside the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company’s Lagos headquarters.
Sunday Oduntan, the CEO of the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), has denounced what he called a startling act of military aggression at the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) headquarters in Lagos.
The moment the armed men in military clothes stormed into the company’s building across from MITV in Ikeja, Lagos, was seen on camera by SaharaReporters.
Witnesses claimed that the military soldiers were beating staff members and other people in the office.
But according to Sunday Oduntan, who spoke on Arise Television on Friday, the incident happened at approximately 7:35 a.m. when several vehicles carrying over 100 fully armed Air Force troops invaded the area from the Sam Ethanan Air Force Base in Ikeja. “The operation was reportedly led by the Air Officer Commanding, an Air Vice Marshal,” according to him. Oduntan described the incident with great worry, claiming he was in Lagos for a meeting. He declared, “We are very, very traumatized.”
“The management was getting ready to attend the commissioning of a solar power plant in Ugutet, so I went early for my meeting in Ikeja yesterday. All of a sudden, we witnessed military trucks carrying heavily armed soldiers arrive. Pregnant women were among those brutalized when they stormed the building. They attacked workers and made them lie on the ground. He claimed that Ikeja Electric’s chief technical officer, who is still in the hospital, was one of the injured.
Ironically, he is the same guy in charge of overseeing the Air Force Base’s electrical supply, and he also claimed that pregnant women were mistreated because of a long-standing disagreement over electricity debt.
He clarified that unpaid energy bills from November 1, 2013, are the root of the dispute between IKEDC and the Nigerian Air Force (NAF). According to records, the Air Force Base at Ikegaya incurred an electricity cost of ₦7.56 billion between 2013 and 2022, but only paid ₦4.3 billion, resulting in a ₦3.2 billion shortfall. The base was billed 1.4 billion naira in 2023 and paid 1.2 billion naira.
In 2024, the cost rose to 1.5 billion naira, but only 623 million naira was paid. As of March 2025, this increased the total amount of outstanding debt to ₦4.34 billion. IKEDC officials assert that even though money was set aside for the purpose, the Air Force has continuously refused to pay its debts despite repeated attempts to do so.
