Dele Ogbodo
The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, has said that electricity consumers across the country have become traumatized
with the ceaseless estimated billings, load shedding and the absence of meters being dished out by the licensed distributors of electricity referred to as DisCos.
Fashola bared his anger and pain at the state of electricity supply in a reaction to an opinion expressed by Mr. Sunday Oduntan, an Executive Director, Research and Advocacy of the Association of Electricity Distributors (ANED), in a statement his media office made available to SHARPEDGENEWS Online week end in Abuja.
He said: “DisCos connect with their consumers, they will hear from them first-hand, how traumatized they feel about load shedding, absence of meters and estimated billing.
“Before fiction becomes fact for lack of a response, I feel obliged to respond to Mr. Oduntan’s response to my directives to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Bureau of Public Enterprise/Nigerian Bulk Electricity Traders (BPE/NBET) as contracting parties to the DisCos.
The message according to the minister is simple: Electricity consumers which include Fashola himself want better better and improved electricity delivery.
On the indebtedness of the distribution companies to federal government through NBET, he stressed: “NBET wants its money which is about about N800 billion, so she can pay the power Generation Companies (GenCos).
“If DisCos can prove that federal government owes more than what we admit, they should deduct (N72 billion) from N800 billion and pay the remaining N728 billion which they owe NBET.”
However, he said though that the DisCos reserve the right to choose to affiliate with that view or disown it, he is optimistic that the power sector will prosper very soon.
While accusing the DisCos of under remitting payments to GenCos, stated: “The GenCos, who are short paid because the DisCos under-remit in spite of high estimated billing to consumers, will tell DisCos how they feel
“My directives seek to rectify these problems because I believe they can be rectified. The BPE, NBET and NERC, to whom my directives were made, contracted individually with DisCos not as an association.
“However to suggest therefore that my directives were political, turns reality on its head; because for the past 20 months, in all my public briefings at monthly meetings with the DisCos, these same issues of service delivery of meters, estimated billings, investment in distribution equipment by DisCos have dominated my remarks.” he said.
Fashola urged DisCos to respond to the query from the ministry as to why 408 feeders, which have a capacity to deliver 5,756MW of power to consumers only carry 444MW because of faulty lines, bad equipment and load shedding?