In the searing heat of the North Bank Region, frustration is boiling over. Markets are paralysed, machines sit silent, and tempers are rising as yet another wave of blackouts cripples daily life.
At Barra Market, trader Fatoumata Ceesay stood behind her stall watching her goods spoil under the blazing sun. “This is unacceptable,” she angrily told JollofNews. “No electricity in the middle of the day? It’s like NAWEC is playing games with us.”
The outage has thrown the market into chaos. Ice melts faster than it can be replaced, refrigerated drinks are being sold at a loss, and traders are losing income by the hour.
In Essau, small business owners are taking an even harder hit. Edrisa Marong, who runs a printing and graphics shop near the turntable, said this is the third blackout in a single month.
“How can we trust our businesses to NAWEC?” he asked. “We’re losing money and customers every time the power goes. My business depends entirely on electricity printing, design, everything. Without power, I’m dead in the water.”
NAWEC officials reportedly blamed the outage on a faulty transformer. But residents say the issue goes far deeper a chronic failure to provide consistent power despite years of promises.
“They said the fault was fixed,” Edrisa added. “But the power still goes on and off. It’s destroying our equipment and our trust.”
For many, patience has run out. “We’ll invest in solar panels,” Edrisa said. “NAWEC will lose our business entirely.”
The blackout crisis has turned from an inconvenience into a threat to survival. “We’re tired of empty promises,” said a Barra resident who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Twenty years of the same excuses ‘maintenance,’ ‘upgrades,’ ‘repairs.’ Meanwhile, we sit in the dark. Enough is enough.”
Musa E.G. Jobe, another printer in Essau, said the power surges have already destroyed two of his machines. “We’re small-scale operators. We can’t afford this. Every time the light flickers, we lose money. Who’s going to compensate us?”
Community voices echo the same sentiment anger, exhaustion, and disbelief. Pa Kolley Saine, a longtime resident, summed it up: “Every time we complain, they say they’re working on it. A panel will be set up. A committee will investigate. But nothing changes. We’ve heard it all before.”
When JollofNews contacted Buba Badjie, communication officer at NAWEC, to explain the prolonged outages, he said he would “revert back.” Days later, he still hasn’t.
In the meantime, the lights remain off, the machines idle, and livelihoods are slipping away.
For the people of Niumi and across the North Bank Region of the Gambia, the message to NAWEC is clear: the patience of the powerless has run out.
