The courts in Rivers State and maybe beyond are already heating up with fireworks as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) whose business hotel/resort was disconnected from electricity for alleged meter bypass has dragged the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) to the Rivers State High Court.
The SAN who owns Oxygen Holiday Resort in Akpajo, near Port Harcourt, is now demanding N110 million as revenue loss since the electricity distribution company in charge of Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers (PHED) disconnected his facilities.
PHED had slammed N6.5 million fine as ‘loss of revenue’ from the hotel complex but instead of getting an alert, it rather got suit and claim of N110 million. This has set the stage for an epic clash of the titans in the ongoing battle by the PHED to stop energy theft in the four states which is said to have climbed to as high as N36 billion per year (N3 billion per month).
PHED sends bills of over N5 billion every month but due to massive bypass by metered customers and outright theft by extended connections outside the official network, less than half of the users do not pay bills despite what the management recently described as the dire need for about N40 billion to meter about 500,000 customers.
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PHED is spending heavily too for new hires because it just hired about 355 officials to boost its anti-theft war. These new hires are to directly manage revenue collections for specific transformers and take responsibility. They are to also listen to the problems of customers and attempt to solve them so as to induce self-compliance rates. These and other measures instituted in recent times are said to have boosted revenue from N2.1 billion to about N2.7 billion, hoping to reduce energy theft to its barest minimum and to record up to N5 billion per month.
These measures seem to attract resistance from customers and even segments of the workforce as the zero-theft policy gets hotter. Some, however, admit that some errors may occur along the line, requiring negations, dialogue and use of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) Forum to resolve matters before the common courts may have to be the last resort.
A document of claims and objections filed in the suit, L. E. Nwosu (SAN) for the Resort, says the premises was disconnected on October 14 and 15, 2020 and a penalty of N6.5m slammed on the Resort. The crux of the SAN’S anger is that two of the hotel’s eight prepaid meters had issues and that PHED officials had not resolved the faults despite being contacted.
