After electricity bill for his wife’s shop went up from N3,000 to N17,000 without a corresponding increase in consumption, Michael Segun (not real name) took to Twitter and wrote in anger, “Estimated billing is surely satanic and whoever came up with it surely works with the devil to swindle people.”
Like a conquered people, large swaths of Nigerian electricity users are forced to pay outrageous electricity bills inflicted on them by electricity distribution companies (DisCos) as the regulator and government officials look the other way or resort to platitudes where sanctions should suffice.
Emboldened by the tacit acceptance of estimated billing as normal by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) which even provides a regulation for it, thereby normalising an aberration, DisCos are not just billing customers upon a cruel exercise of discretion, they have become predatory in their charges.
Electricity customers like Raji Adetayo, who lives in Ajuwon area, a suburb of Ogun State but managed by Ikeja DisCo, has had his old meter removed without getting a new one and placed on estimated billing. His charges have gone up from N5,500 to N21,000.
Five years after taking over government power assets, DisCos have only metered 3,704,302 (about 45 percent) of their 8,310,408 registered electricity customers, according to NERC’s 2018 third quarter report.
This is a gross violation of the DisCos’ performance agreement which demands they fully meter customers. Rather than sanction the erring investors, NERC provided the Credit Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI), which allows electricity consumers to self-finance their meter acquisition and installation.
DisCos soon found a way to game the system by keeping customers on endless waiting lists claiming meters were unavailable. Some DisCos had contractual agreements with foreign meter manufacturers but things went awry when Nigeria’s 2016 foreign exchange crises, caused by fallen oil production and prices, led to a shortage of dollars. Many customers lost their money.
Babatunde Fashola, minister of Power, Works and Housing, threw out the policy and told customers to enter negotiations with their DisCos on meter provisions.
On March 8, 2018, NERC created the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) regulations which allowed DisCos to outsource meter provision. The policy would create over N70 billion worth of market for local meter manufacturers as they were supposed to supply 30 percent of the required meters, NERC said.
One year later, the policy continues to wobble. NERC in March 2018 issued a deadline of August 1, 2018 to the 11 Discos to engage the services of MAP. This was ignored and NERC kicked the can further down the road. One year later, the regulator says it continues to register new entrants even as Nigerians groan under bruising estimated billings.
“You’re using the estimated billing system to rip off money from poor people in peri-Urban areas like Jikwoyi breeding a corrupt system of impunity. I have made application for pre-paid metre for two years now without any reasonable response, submitted necessary documentations,” Abraham Solomon said in a tweet to Abuja DisCo.
Another user asked, “Who do we run to when u (you) give estimated billing, destroy our devices with high and low voltage or don’t give us electrical power?”
According to NERC, DisCos received 128,791 complaints from consumers in the three months ending December 2018. Metering and billing accounted for 68,749 or 53 percent of the total complaints.
DisCos now write bills based on the perceived purchasing power of customers. They test customers’ purchasing power by sending an unreasonable bill as bait. If the customer settles it, he is trapped. It becomes a benchmark to be reviewed upwards after two or more attempts. Requests to audit a customer’s electricity usage are often ignored.
Savvy customers play them at their game.
“When they first sent me a crazy bill of N27,000 for a two-bedroom apartment from N10,000, I decided to start paying N7,000. It went on for three months and now they have cut the bill to N8,000 monthly. But they are threatening to disconnect me unless I settle the accumulated difference. I threatened to sue them if they tried it,” said Jimoh Akindele, a lawyer in Ketu area of Lagos.
Some have more colourful description for the practice.
“This estimated billing is broad day robbery,” Inyang said in tweet to Abuja DisCo.
A bill to criminalise estimated billing passed the third reading in the House of Representatives in January.
“Any regulation that allows estimation of bills when the actual consumption can be ascertained is against natural justice and equity and should not stand,” raged Femi Gbajabiamila, majority leader at Nigeria’s House of Representatives, who sponsored the bill. “The bill will ensure that prepaid meters are installed in all houses, so long as the customers applied for the meters.”
But with barely two months to the end of the current National Assembly, chances that the bill will become a law appear illusory.
ISAAC ANYAOGU
