Public Electricity Power Failure and Household Adjustment Strategies: A Case Study of Urban Households in Uyo

Abstract

The paper examined public electricity power failures and households adjustment strategies in Uyo urban, Akwa Ibom State using descriptive analysis. Fifty households with un-identical demographic characteristics identified through random sampling were included in the survey. Urban residents in Uyo are largely informal workers, hence their income is low. The survey reveals that urban households in Uyo metropolis use public electricity for unlimited households’ chores, but the provision and availability and public electricity declines as day-hour increases on daily basis and, as a result, urban households in Uyo spent at least 5 percent to at most 15 percent of their mostly informally generated incomes on energy adjustments strategies ranging from generator to rudimentary fire wood and charcoal to provide alternative energy supply to their families and earned for themselves the risk and inconveniences associated with such strategies. The study also found that, through the industrialization policy of the present government, public electricity infrastructures are being provided and this has reduced the hour-day loss by urban households to public electricity power failures and recommend owning the electricity infrastructures by urban households (as it were) in Uyo as a way of reducing the security risk associated with vandalism.