WHY IKEDC KEEPS PUNISHING THE JUST WITH THE UNJUST

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Ife Adewole

Power Holding Company of Nigeria PHCN, is a conglomerate of three “branches” of the electricity sector — Generation Company (GenCos), Transmission Company of Nigeria (TransCo) and Distribution Company (DisCos).

DisCos are the ones saddled with the responsibility of distributing power to the consumers, they collects revenue for the sustenance of the two other branches of PHCN. Simply put, DisCos are the direct sellers of power to the consumers.

This is how it works, let’s assume a GenCo generated electricity worth N50 million for Ikeja GRA in January 2019, TransCo transported the power through high tension cables to the Ikeja Electric Distribution Company IKEDC. IKEDC then decides to supply power to Ikeja GRA.

By the end of January 2019, IKEDC was able to collect revenue of N30 million which happens to be the fund generated from meter readings in Ikeja GRA. This automatically implies that Ikeja GRA has short changed IKEDC of N20 million through bypass and illegal connections.

Illegal connections happens as a result of some houses inability to maintain an account with any of the DisCos either intentional or unintentional, while meter bypass happens either when the owner of a house connects all electrical lightnings to the meter and connects other appliances like Air Conditional, Television, Hotplates among others to electrical pole through underground connections, or when a consumer after exhausting the unit on his/her prepaid meter temporarily or permanently resulted to tapping power from his/her neighbours or directly from electric pole, whichever one that is done is called Energy theft.

Energy theft according to Smith 2003 is the Illegal use of electricity service with the intention to avoid billing. It is one of the reasons DisCos will continue to frustrate all efforts of the government to provide meter to every house. This is because IKEDC will apparently have to pay N20 million debt incurred through illegal connections and meter bypass to TCN and GenCo.

Though, Associated Technical and Commercial (AT & C) has the responsibility to take care of losses in the tariff regime to make up for theft and other leakages. But since almost half of the tariff has been stolen, it will make adjusting almost impossible hence, IKEDC and other DisCos will therefore choose “estimated billing” over prepaid meters — a system that punishes the just along with the unjust.

Since IKEDC in our analysis, cannot explain for the loss of N20 million worth of power supplied to Ikeja GRA, it would therefore divides the number of GRA houses without meter by N20 million and send estimated bills of the amount generated from the division to each houses. This explains why DisCos are very reluctant to make prepaid meters available to all consumers, because DisCo’s, sees estimated billing as a means of survival, it is a method derived to remain in business at the detriment of their consumers satisfaction.

With this analysis, it is glaring that estimated billings is a scam, a means derived by DisCos to keep exploiting innocent consumers by compelling them to pay for the sin of other consumers who are the perpetrators of energy theft. That’s why houses that only use power to light up bulbs watch TV and probably iron their clothes ended up receiving a bill of N10,000 – N20,000 every month.

Another worst activities of the DisCos, is a situation whereby the occupants of a building traveled for two to three months and arrived to his/her house to meet DisCos monthly bills piled up at the entrance of the house despite the fact that the house was locked when he was not around.

This to me is the highest level of insanity, why will you make consumers pay for the service you do not render and still expect them to be happy with you, only a tyrant will expect that anyway.

This explains why DisCos staffs are always assaulted whenever they cross paths with some of the unsatisfied consumers.

The essence of prepaid meters is to make life easy for both parties, hence consumers should desist from any form of energy thefts because a thief has no other name than been a thief. Energy theft is a serious crime and attracts the following penalty according to National Electricity Regulatory Commission NERC: For single phase violators N50, 000.00 initial and 75,000.00 for subsequent incidents, three phase residential customers, N100,000.00 for initial incident and fine of N150,000.00 for subsequent incidents.

DisCos should see it as a necessity to install prepaid meter in every house and make more strict rules to curtail the activities of energy theft.