By Dele Sobowale

“The Commission is considering putting a ceiling on the amount of consumption that unmetered customers in a particular class could be billed by estimation in a particular month. This initiative is aimed at incentivising the distribution companies to accelerate their metering..” PUNCH, June 3, 2015, p 32

Perhaps plans were in progress to introduce a measure which equity and commonsense dictated all along, but the announcement so early in June 2015, by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, represents the sort of transformation which should have been introduced years ago.

But, Dr Amadi, Chairman of NERC, who was recommended to President Jonathan by Professor Bart Nnaji, former Federal Minister for Power, and a heavy investor in one of the DISCOs, had all along cut the figure of an apologist for Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, and now the DISCOs.

It does not require the intelligence of a space rocket scientist to understand that the DISCOs were sold to friends of the former administration, despite the efforts to make the biddings appear transparent. Amadi could not therefore be expected to regulate tariffs in a manner that would jeopardize the investments of the friends of the government and his benefactor.

He is one fellow who would not bite the fingers that have fed him – unless pushed by more powerful forces. The change of government had forced Amadi and NERC to address a problem which had existed for more than twenty years, apparently, but not really, defying solution. That problem had been estimated billing by PHCN and now DISCOs. Hundreds of thousands of houses and even commercial buildings in Nigeria either have no metre or have metres which packed up years ago.

Permit me to present my experience as a case study. The one in my house, in Lagos, was there before I was born in 1944 until recently when Eko Electricity Supply Company, EKEDC, mercifully provided a prepaid metre. The 70-plus years old metre packed up more than thirty years ago and since then it had been estimated billing. It is three bed-room bungalow, with a long veranda, kitchen, toilet, one air-conditioner, five fans, two refrigerators and one electric iron.

Furthermore, no more than four people live there and everybody goes to work or school from morning till early evening; then after eating and watching television, if there is power supply, retire to bed by 10.00pm to prepare for the next day. All lights, except one security light are turned off. Yet, for 12 years, NEPA, then PHCN, sent bills almost the same as that of a three-storey building next door; with over 70 occupants and at least 12 air-conditioners – among other appliances.

Apparently, they never sleep in that house because we can still hear them at 2 0r 3 am. All letters and visits to NEPA (PHCN) were of no avail until I sent a letter to the Managing Director, copied to the Minister of Power, late Chief Bola Ige, threatening to stop paying and to resort to self-help. That brought temporary relief. To shorten the story, it became too obvious that NEPA, PHCN and now the DISCOs are aware they cheat those customers who are honourable enough to pay the unwarranted bills.

Their staff connive with delinquent customers to over-estimate the bills of good customers in favour of those whose bills are deliberately understated. This became clear to me when I found out that a NEPA official rents one of the flats in the three-storey building!!! This is perhaps the only country in the world, in which, millions of customers are paying trillions of naira every month and they don’t have proof of consumption of the service. And, it is perhaps the only country where such a situation could have persisted for thirty or more years.

One of my readers, nearing ninety now, living in Abuja, had often told me that Nigerians are too docile. It is difficult to disagree. It took the increase of fuel price from N79 to N141 on 1st January 2012, to induce us to occupy Freedom Square in Ikeja, Lagos, and to force the Federal Government to scale down the pump price. Meanwhile, a more outrageous assault on our pockets had persisted for decades without a response from us.

Although, the previously lethargic, or was it complaisant, NERC had apparently woken up to its responsibilities, the measure announced is not enough. Nigerian power consumers must live up to their responsibilities. We must start demanding proof of service delivery from DISCOs as justification for the bills they bring to us. Certainly, if enough people simply refuse to pay unless the bills are substantiated, then the DISCOs will speed up metre delivery.

One argument in favour of this absolutely legal self-help is that NERC cannot be relied upon to enforce its decisions; agency officials can easily be compromised by the DISCOs leaving us no better than when we started.    After years of fighting what appeared like a losing battle with NEPA, PHCN and DISCO, I suddenly stumbled on a strategy that worked wonders. Today, I have a pre-paid metre, which admittedly does not guarantee total equity, but, I no longer have to wait every month not knowing what the bill will read.

LAST LINE: If any official of a DISCO is reading this, let me inform them that it is actually in their own interest to install metres. Hitherto, we carelessly leave lights, fans and air-conditioners on because it mattered not how much we use or waste. With the pre-paid, all the waste had stopped.