ELECTRICITY DISTRIBITION AND QUANTITY RATIONING

ELECTRICITY  DISTRIBITION AND QUANTITY RATIONING

BY:

MUDASSIR ALIYU YUNUSA

NTA ZARIA

mudassiray@gmail.com

  Electricity is one of the major issues for national growth and development, but in Nigeria the issue of advancement with regard to power supply has been a mere pipe dream for long especially with the failure of the Nigerian power sector to provide adequate electricity for domestic households and industrial purposes. Power supply difficulties crippled our nucleus sectors (Agriculture, Industrial and Mining) which impede the Nigeria's socio economic development. The energy supply crisis is complex, stems from  variety of issues and has been ongoing for long, the most trembling among them is the unconstitutional treatment and silent exploitation of consumers by some electricity distribution companies whose mandate is to distribute  power appropriately to customers for domestic and industrial consumption. Their actions has continue to tramp on the right of people especially the companies' failure to provide  prepaid metres to their clients which outrightly violated the guidelines on customers' metering and billing law of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

The Commission's regulation on standard performance for electricity distribution stipulates three months ultimatum after which the utility firm must find every possible means to read the meters for actual energy consumed. In the same vein the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005, which is an effort made to ensure efficient and effective management of electricity supply to meet the yearnings of Nigerians through provision of stable, adequate, safe and reliable electricity supply provided that:

- All customers have the right to be provided and installed with proper and functional metres.

- All customers have the right to be informed and educated on electricity services.

- All customers have the right to transparent electricity billing (not illegal estimated billing).

-  All unmetered customers should be issued with electricity bills strictly base on NERC's estimated billing methodology.

- It is the customer’s right to be notified in writing ahead of disconnection of electricity service

by the DisCo (Distribution Company) serving the customer in line with NERC’s guidelines.

-All customers have a right to file complaints and to the prompt investigation of complaints.

- All customers have the right to be refunded when over billed.

Above are some guidelines which are mainly disregarded and violated by some distribution companies and some wicked customers who deliberately bye passes the prepaid metre for illegal consumption  which seriously causes mutual misunderstanding and distrust between the customers and electricity distributors. What pain me much to write this piece is the exorbitant, estimated and informal billings charge by some distributors where some personnel of these companies use to write the amount to be paid with pen on top of the original computer print out bill from the company. What kind of nasty act and foul play is this? I personally deemed it as highly unprofessional, unethical and against the provision of NERC, and also contrary to the principles of Nigerian Consumer Protection Council (NCPC), whose aim is to protect and enhance consumers' interest through information, education, and enforcement of the rights of consumers which was purposely established by an Act of Parliament to promote and protect the interests of consumers over all products and services.

However, this ill treatment makes many electricity consumers feel aggrieved and cheated day by day couple with poor and epileptic electricy supply as well as unjustifiable estimated and over billings. It is obvious that Distribution companies generated more revenue from estimating billing than from prepaid meters, that could be the reason why they failed to provide prepaid meters entirely to their consumers, eventhough Government have initiated a system of Meter Asset Providers (MAP) an investors whose task is to provide  Prepaid Meters to all consumers.

However  Some customers considered this action as fraud,  even though in many cases they  (consumers) are not helping the situation by declining to pay diligently the energy consumed as at when due, this makes some  distribution companies to  initiate Load Management Plan (LMP) in which hours of electricity supply is rationing to consumers just for the company to regulate and determine the load, consumption and also to reduce  what they called Aggregate Technical Collection and Commercial loses (ATC&C). This is incredible expression especially to other customers that are complying to the terms and conditions of payment.

It is pertinent to note that transforming Nigeria's electricity sector has to be thoroughly supervised right from generation, transmission and more specifically the distribution. Therefore, Government must intervene to checkmate the operations of these companies, call them to order and force them to work in line with laid down rules and regulations, and in respect to that, Nigerians should collectively compliment the course and if cheated and deprived, they should respond accordingly and fight for their right, express their grievances through proper ways such as peaceful demonstrations, letters, petitions and they should go through the right channels seeking for remedies on all atrocities associated with electricity.

Finally, I want to emphasize and call the attention of all Distribution Companies that estimated billing is always negative and inconsistent to them and their customers, either by under charging high consumption or over charging low consumption respectively. And at the same time writing amount of money on customer's bill is illegal, unethical, and exploitation of the highest order.

Mudassir can be reached mudassiray@gmail.com

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