By our Reporter
About seven persons lost their lives after inhaling the fumes from generator inside a Recording studio along Transformer Road, in Amarata axis of Yenagoa, Bayelsa State.
The deceased persons were said to be to working in the recording studio, owned by one them, identified as Akpos Barakubo, where the incident happened on Monday night breaking Tuesday.
According to residents in the area, the crew members in the studio were working into the midnight using their generating set due to poor power supply in the state, “and maybe they fell asleep and forgot to switch off the generator.”
Newsmen gathered that six of them were later discovered died in the morning, while one who unconscious and rushed to the hospital, but later gave up.
It was also gathered that most of the deceased were undergraduate students from the Niger Delta University (NDU), who were into the recording business “to help themselves in school.”
As at the time of filling the report, security operatives have cordoned off the area, while the corpses had been evacuated the mortuary.
A resident of the area, Mr Damion Asamonye, blamed the state and federal governments as well as power distribution company for the deaths, saying if there was adequate power supply, there wouldn’t have been any need for generator at night.
He lamented the situation in Bayelsa State where Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) “will only bring light when they want to collect bills and take it away shortly after customers pay the bills.”
He said: “Both federal and state governments have failed us, if there was public power supply, maybe these people wouldn’t have lost their lives in this circumstances.
“Seven able-bodied young men just died like that because of the failure of government, most annoying thing is that tomorrow, the PHED personnel will come with ladder to disconnect light that they are not supplying, how can people be spending their money in fueling generators despite the current hardship in Nigeria, even after paying for light bills?”
Another resident in the area, Mrs Joy Reuben, whose neighborhood woke up on Tuesday morning to witness the tragic incident, called on government to ensure that there is adequate power supply in the state, so that citizens will not be allowed to die in such manner again.
When contacted, police spokesman in Bayelsa State, ASP Musa Muhammed, promised to find out and call back, but he did not pick his calls afterward.
