‘Abolish the band system’

Chief Princewill Okorie is the Executive Director of the Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Centre. In this interview, he speaks on the problems in the power sector.

Where did we get it  wrong  on the electricity issue that 13 years after privatisation, we are yet to get it right?

The intention of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration was good, but those that came to implement it during Jonathan’s administration were very mischievous in their approach in executing the privatisation policy. Why do I say that? There is no clear consumer enumeration. They didn’t come up with a clear, sincere and transparent enumeration of the number of electricity consumers in the country, and that was the beginning of the problems.

Secondly, the investment, those that came to take over, were not sincere in their financial and technical capacity. They’ve not invested much. The infrastructure were already provided before by some states, local governments and National Assembly members. All these were monies from the government.

Even after the privatisation, the federal government and consumers have been investing in infrastructure such as transformer, cables and poles with the distribution companies staying aloof, only to inherit them after they’ve been implemented and installed, which is criminal. The third-party investment policy in the sector is abandoned by the distribution companies. They don’t comply with it, and it’s not enforced. The regulator looks away; the ministry looks away and then consumers are frustrated.

When the consumers provide these things, the condition is that they should sign an agreement with the distribution company with a view to recovering their money and that is not done. The billing is insincere as the distribution companies do not follow the billing methodology. So, it is all fraud; extorting the consumers, extorting Nigerians and the institutions of state that should prevent these things are looking away in violation of Section 17 of the constitution.

Look at the Ministry of Power, under it, you have a Department for Generation, Distribution, and Transmission, but none for consumer protection, which is captured in Section 119 of the Electricity Act 2023 as amended. So where is fair play?

Now look at the issue of bands, this is another criminal introduction in the sector, band A, band B, band C. If you look at the quantity of generation, the power generated by the generation companies are about 3,000 megawatts or 4,000, how can the Ministry tell you in all fairness and sincerity that 4,000 megawatts can go through the 774 local government area councils of Nigeria? How many kilowatt hours, how many megawatts will go to the states and the local governments to enable band A customers across the board get their light for 20 hours? It is not true. So, it’s deceit.

And that has made the distribution companies take advantage and now begin to make a supply more for people they claim are in band A and in some cases, they are migrating people to band A secretly to be able to make them pay more for service not rendered. So, I oppose it.

Is the federal government’s continuous intervention making things worse instead of remedying it?

That is what it is like. The sector is a conduit pipe for some people in government to make money. Tell me why the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will intervene in several schemes for the sector with stabilization fund and no result. Then they brought National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP,) that saw N59bn released in 2020. How many Nigerians got the meter? Now they are talking about free meters again without investigating how the former one went, you are talking of bringing another one.

Some people in government use the sector to siphon money and think Nigerians don’t know anything. This is where you see that the country is not really running democracy, no justice, no fair play in this country. Thiss sector is like a criminal enterprise. The power sector privatisation is a criminal enterprise perpetrated by some people against the citizens, which is in contravention of section 14, 2b, security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.

Are Nigerians safe in the power sector today? Poor people, the money they pay for electricity is more than the money they pay for house rent in some areas. And the government looks away and you claim you are reducing poverty.

What’s your view on the recent plan to deduct subsidy payment directly from the federation account?

My take on that is, number one, if it will be well executed, if the subsidy will be transparently and accountably utilised, I believe it’s a good thing. Why do I say so? If you look at Aba Power, that is Geometrics in Aba, the Aba economy has been revived. Many entrepreneurs are moving into Aba because of Geometrics and it is giving them 24 hours of supply. That means that the local government is getting more revenue and the state is getting from that area because the business people are paying rates, paying tax and revenue that the local governments collect.  Now if the state government is collecting this money based on the fact that businesses are booming and the number of industries is increasing producing and making money, the state itself should contribute a subsidy to reduce the cost for resident consumers because as they supply that light, most consumers will not be able to pay the normal bill they are supposed to pay to sustain supply.

So, if that money will be used to support the industry like Aba power now, support them in paying for gas, support them in getting gas and improving their infrastructure, it’s not a bad idea. But if the subsidy you will remove, you will remove it and it doesn’t impact on the consumers in the state, it does not impact in improving power supply, then it doesn’t make sense. So, if they want to do that, first of all, consult a committee.

Let the federal government constitute a committee to monitor utilisation of the subsidy removed from the state and local governments so that they will be monitored and used effectively. It’s not like the one they say they are sharing money to state governors because their subsidy from petroleum was removed. But who is monitoring the utilisation? Now the state governments get this money and citizens of the state are getting poorer as poverty is increasing.

And this takes me back to enforcement of the provisions of the Electricity Act. You will see the DisCos coming with criminal allegations against consumers. In fact, I’ve been with the audit committee investigating power sector reform and expenditure in the House of Representatives. I am the civil society representative in their team. And we’ve been going around.

The DisCos keep saying that consumers are committing electricity theft, vandalizing infrastructure and owing them, but when you look at it, who is the real thief in this sector? It is the DisCos. How can you take over my transformer? A community invests about N50m to buy transformer, coal and buy wire. Still pay you to energise it. I will not be allowed to sign agreement with them. You rather force them to sign that they have donated it to you and you take it over to make money. Even when it gets bad, you tell them you have no money to repair. The same consumers will repair. But NERC will approve Operational expenditure (OPEX) and capital expenditure (CAPEX) for you. Where are you using it? Which committee is monitoring the use of OPEC and CAPEX by the distribution companies? So, you see that the distribution companies are the real thieves in the sector.

Why will you give people bills? Since 2016, NERC has abolished bulk billing but up to now, the distribution companies put a lot of communities in bulk billing. So that they’ll be exploiting them.

Distribution companies frustrate people from getting meters so that they’ll be giving them estimated bills without following the CAPEX methodology approved by NERC. All these are fraudulent practices in the sector.

Now you talk about vandalism, theft and meter bypass, Section 209 to Section 227 of the Electoral Act 2023, that deals with offenses and penalties. You will see the recommendation on how to deal with vandalism, meter bypass and tampering. But no distribution company has a plan on how to enforce that and protect their facilities. They stay away because they didn’t invest in buying them. But they will easily go to government and tell them that people are destroying their things. Is it the government that will come and protect it for them? You didn’t provide a transformer. But for you to even come up with a mechanism to protect it, you don’t want to do that as you don’t want to take responsibility.

You only want to be collecting. How can the sector work in that way?

What is the way forward for the sector to improve the whole thing?

Number one, the Ministry of Power should not be shying away from engaging consumers. Since this sector was privatised, have you had the Ministry engaging consumers in any interactive forum? Why is the Ministry not having a unit to oversee consumer protection components of the Act and ensure that policies that protect consumers are implemented.

Why would the regulator say they are going for complaint resolution? Is it the duty of the regulator? Or the regulator should insist that the distribution companies should treat complaints and resolve them. They don’t. So, they’re giving attention to consumers. Doing effective consumer enumeration. To get the actual data of the number of consumers we have in this country. That is what that department can do.

Having said that, there has to be a committee or whatever they will set up to ensure that the Offensive and Penalty Segment of the Act is implemented. If that is done, some of this rubbish can be reduced.

Let them also abolish this band thing. It’s criminal and then again. What is it that the generation company will generate power distribution companies will take and owe them but go and extort consumers. Consumers cannot owe them but they owe the generation companies money that is up to trillions.

Also, Nigeria has gas in quantity. Why must Nigerian distribution companies and generation companies be buying gas in dollars in Nigeria. Why will gas price be based on dollars and that is frustrating them because they can’t get the gas to wheel out the power they generate. The distribution companies are complaining; the generation companies are complaining. So, why will our government not come up with a policy that will make gas supply very cheap.

For the power sector, let them declare emergency on the power sector. They said President Tinubu always takes bold decisions I wonder why he hasn’t taken bold decisions to set up a national committee to review the implementation of the power sector privatisation just like the House of Representatives is doing. That can solve the problem.

We have been having cases of grid collapse. How can we solve that?

What is the quality of materials that are used to carry out installations because when you allow the consumer to go and buy a transformer out of frustration, they may buy refurbished ones and when they blow, it affects the grid. They use quacks who are not trained to do the job. You see the ministries, departments and agencies giving power sector contracts to their own companies. Most of them have their companies on ground and then give it to people that lack the competence. While the electrical contractors are there looking for what to do. So, when you give incompetent people jobs to do, what happens?

Who is monitoring the transmission lines? The civil defence corps you said has a mandate of protecting critical infrastructure. How many of them go into the bush. Where the transmission lines are to monitor them. So, that’s my take.

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