The Coalition of South East Youth Leaders (COSEYL), a socio-political youth organization in the South-East region of Nigeria has decried the exploitation of electricity consumers in the region, by Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC).
The group is alarmed that EEDC is still collecting money from consumers in the South-East, especially Aba, Abia State, for pre-paid meters, despite the federal government’s instruction to electricity distribution companies to provide free meters to consumers, who are yet to be metered.
“The federal government has made it clear through the regulator’s direct order, as well as the intervention from the ministry of Power that meters are to be provided to Nigerians at no cost, but the EEDC violated the directive and still went ahead to collect money as high as N38,000 per meter from customers in the South-East.
“This is a blatant abuse of power and we condemn it in its entirety. We demand that the EEDC should immediately refund its customers the monies collected from them for meters and the federal government should do the needful, by sanctioning them for such acts of disobedience and corruption.
“This will serve as a deterrent to others not to disobey government directives,” they stated.
The group in a statement signed, by Goodluck Ibem, president general, and Kanice Igwe, secretary-general, COSEYL and made available to BusinessDay, called on the federal government to ensure that the meters to be provided, by the Discos meet approved standards.
COSEYL alleged that most of the meters deployed by some DISCOs are sub-standard and criminally manipulated to the disadvantage of consumers.
“If the federal government is truly sincere about providing better service to Nigerians, they should immediately remove the monopoly in the power sector, so that other interested investors can come into the business.
“It is only in a competitive business and environment that customers are served better, government directives obeyed and efficiency guaranteed.
“Nigerians are presently facing different forms of hardship, caused by the pandemic, economic recession, and #EndSARS protest and it will be unpatriotic for anyone to push the people harder than required”.
They urged the federal government to stand up to its responsibilities, by ensuring complete and absolute compliance with its directives by the Discos.
All efforts made to reach Emeka Eze, head, communications, EEDC, for comments failed, as he did not pick several calls placed on his mobile phone.
