Power supply tops Nigerians’ complaints list, says CPC

The Director-General, Consumer Protection Council, Mr Babatunde
Irukera, has said the issue of power supply is top on the list of
consumer complaints.

Irukera stated this on Wednesday in Lagos at a customer
engagement town hall meeting organised by Eko Electricity
Distribution Plc in conjunction with the CPC.

He said, “Power continues to be the greatest challenge our
country is experiencing. In the CPC, complaint about power
distribution constitutes the number one complaint we get. When I
was going in to start working there, I suspected telecoms or
banking will be the number one area where there would be most
complaints.

“But I was surprised that those two are number two and three,
behind power. But power is as much a problem for consumers as it is
for government, business, investors and everyone else. Power is a
national challenge.”

Irukera expressed concern over arbitrary billing and group
disconnection of electricity, among others.

He said, “Thirdly, it is the responsibility of the power
companies to provide tools and equipment such as transformers and
the other ancillary tools for delivering electricity to the people.
Neighbourhoods should not be responsible for acquiring and
installing those tools because they pay for them.

“What we have repeatedly said and shared with the leadership of
Eko Disco today is that there are three key things that we think
can certainly improve the interaction with consumers in the
industry: transparency, sensitivity and responsiveness.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, EKEDC, Mr Adeola
Fadeyibi, said the firm’s goal is to provide “24/7 power in a safe
environment.”

He said, “I agree that people should only pay for what they
consume. As a business that is responsible for the revenue of the
whole market, my obligation is that the system must rightly pay for
all the power that comes from the grid to the people; who then
accounts for the losses?

“I think today was probably the beginning of one of those
fantastic meetings. The DG of CPC was extremely happy that I was at
the meeting; it shows the seriousness of Eko Disco. We all agreed
that there is a problem, and we need to face the problem together.
We acknowledged the existence of the issues of theft, bypasses,
overloaded transformers, group disconnection, and arbitrary
billing. How do we now reduce or even eliminate them?

“The DG CPC challenged us to reduce the issue of estimated
billing. The Meter Asset Provider Regulation is something that will
create a lot of relief in the system; we can do more metering
faster under a separate kind of agreement as being managed by the
Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. But an ideal situation
will be to meter everywhere from the transformer to the feeder down
to every enumerated customer.”

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