Blackout blues: the Lagos suburbs that have been in darkness for five years

For Lagosians, electricity shortages can mean cooking by torchlight, or companies spending a shocking 70% of the budget on diesel ... and some neighbourhoods have spent half a decade with no power at all

When the electric transformer in his neighbourhood was vandalised five years ago, Akinnuoye Olagunju, then 21, didn't think they would never have power again.

Officials from the energy utility demanded that his father, as well as each of the 2,000 or so people in Oreta, pay a communal bribe to repair the damage: 2,000 naira ($10) each, a lot of money in this sleepy and impoverished fishing village.