Arbitrary electricity billings, energy theft, issue of metering, group disconnections and poor power sector regulation have been identified as key issues creating frustrations and aggravations between electricity providers, especially discos and consumers.
Over the years, Nigerian electricity consumers and providers have lived with these challenges including lack of state-of-art to distribute electricity, exhibition of violence by consumers against service providers, delay in addressing consumers’ complaints and discriminatory distribution of electricity.
But in an attempt to fashion a new chapter in the sector, Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, FCCPC has initiated a forum between consumers and electricity providers address grey areas.
At one of those town hall meetings held between FCCPC, Ikeja Disco, consumers and electricity regulatory bodies, CEO of FCCPC, Babatunde Irukera said the meeting is to allow the discos to hear the consumers, recognise what their grievances are and to improve on how they address those grievances.
For instance, he said there is no excuse of billing consumers for power that they did not use. “An estimated billing itself seems to have been redefined, abused and mis-characterised. We use to have estimated billing in Nigeria before the discos and it was not such a contentious but the real challenge is that this estimated billing has become arbitrary and crazy and that is why people are resisting it. That is why metering seems to be the only option”.
Irukera further said that consumers are dissatisfied because of poor quality of service, and that dissatisfaction becomes aggravation when service providers are not sensitive. However, he said the forum is part of efforts designed to enlighten consumers against the abuse to field workers of discos. “We must find solutions to achieve restraint on violence and again police neighbourhoods to check energy theft and illegal connections”.
Speaking at the forum, Princewill Okorie, National President, Association for Public Policy Analysis said the problem in the power sector is the failure of Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC to enforce the Electric sector reform act of 2005 without being partial.
Okorie said section 32 (1) F says regulation should be just and balanced to all consumers, investors and licensees, but “what you see is that NERC operates in support of the discos against the consumers.
The act approved that competition should be encouraged in the sector but NERC goes behind to frustrate competition”, he said.
According to him, FG, States and LGs own 40 % of the shares in the electricity value chain, but he regrets that most ministries of power in the states don’t know much about the regulatory act.
Okorie beckoned on President Buhari to set up a committee to review the performance of NERC in the electricity sector to understand how NERC is enforcing electric power sector reform act stating that the partial implementation of the act is creating problems in the sector.
Daniel Obi
