ONE of the two incidents that have given meaning to me, to the economic concepts: monopoly, duopoly and oligopoly in the last decade or so was the introduction of per second billing by Glo in 2003. Before then, the other GSM companies made it look like impossibility. But, as soon as Glo introduced it, the other GSM companies quickly joined the train.
The other incident occurred about two months ago, when I asked my son to get me a crate of my favourite cola soft drink. He returned after a long time and said he could not find the product in our area. I said maybe it was the demand for it that was too high. To my surprise, I asked him to buy the same drink for me the following Sunday and he still could not find. So, when I got to the office on Monday, I sent for a crate of the drink. The person I sent returned with the 50cl plastic bottles instead of the 35cl that we could not get to buy in my area. He was the one who told me that the producer of the popular cola drink had jettisoned the 35cl bottle which it was selling for N100, and had replaced it with the 50cl bottle for the same amount. Why? Competition.
What happened was that the producer had been battling with the entry into the soft drink market of a relatively unknown brand which is bigger, yet selling for N100, just the same amount the 35cl of the popular brand was selling. Nigerians, as rational human beings fell for the cheap price. So, it is not only in politics that there are no permanent friends or permanent foes, but permanent interest. It is also true of consumers’ behaviour. People naturally go for what they consider pocket-friendly . Unfortunately, this is what a company like Ikeja Electric (IE) is yet to understand. As a matter of fact, I decided to draw this analogy to introduce my readers to today’s issue because it is what makes the difference between companies that are smiling to the banks, and those that are perpetually struggling to survive. The producer of the popular soft drink I am talking about is over 60 years old in Nigeria, with billions as turnover, and hefty profit-after-tax. Yet it quickly adjusted when it saw its bottom-line was threatened in its quest to retain its loyal consumers, and even win new ones. This is what you expect a privately-owned company properly so-called to do.
Indeed, despite its popularity and long presence in the global and Nigerian markets, the producer has not stopped advertising its brands. Many other multinationals that are as old or even older, and are companies of means rather than of straw, are also still aggressively advertising their products. The point these firms are making is that every customer counts. Even the big names among them are targeting the pockets of the poorest of the poor by ‘sachetising’ (please pardon my coinage) their products to make it affordable. It is their pockets they love, and not necessarily the desire to make the poor enjoy the products which they (the poor) cannot buy in bigger containers.
Ikeja Electric, on the other hand, is barely six years old. Its turnover is nothing compared to any of the big industrial names that are still looking for customers. Yet, at least two of its managers said something recently that shocked me. They are so angry with my community that they told us that their company can do without revenue from our transformer! And they have kept faithfully to their words since June 30 when the ‘knock down the transformer strategy’ was allegedly applied on the communities’ transformer. But one of the managers said it was thieves that vandalised the cable which led to the six-month-old power outage in the areas. Apparently, the decision to frustrate every effort made to get power back into the affected communities since then is their punishment for alleging that it was Ikeja Electric workers that ‘knocked down’ the transformer. The transformer in question serves about 64 buildings, residential and commercial, in the Pleasure area, some parts of Ajiboye Crescent, the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, etc. Compare and contrast this work ethos with that of the soft drinks producer that I cited above and other multinationals that are doing pretty well and are still looking for ways to boost their revenue by bringing into the net the lowest income earners on behalf of whom they have devised packaging their products in sachets.
Apart from the efforts of the communities to get the light restored, I also took one or two steps to articulate this matter through an email I sent to customercare@ikejaelectric.com on November 5, 2019. The complaint was basically about my personal issue with the company which NERC Forum Ikeja had ruled on on April 11, 2019, directing that I should be connected immediately after being yanked off the National Grid for no just cause, for almost six months (as at the day when the matter was heard). That is still pending, as I have had to disagree with the purported reconciliation the company single-handedly did, in the same email. The good news is that at least, the email was dignified with a reply.
The November 5 email reads in part: “However, the aforementioned blackout is only tangential at this point in time. But it is instructive to the extent that, for me, I would have been powering my own electricity for a year, in the next two weeks or so.”
Yet, the truth of the matter is that there is no way Ikeja Electric can say it did not knock down the transformer. Its argument that it was thieves who stole the cable attached to the transformer pales into insignificance when it is realised that the said transformer has been idle since June 30. Even if it was thieves who did the damage, does that explain why the communities affected should have been in darkness for more than five months? The experience of the communities’ representatives with the company in the course of resolving the problem clearly shows a deliberate plot to keep them in perpetual darkness for as long as they were not ready to ‘apologise’. At least that was the impression we got from some of the company’s workers who told the communities’ representatives to go and apologise to one ‘madam’ or their ‘oga’ if they wanted the matter resolved. The ‘oga’s’ word appears to be law in the system, given the several failed efforts to get the transformer fixed since June.
One does not know how many such staff (who believe that the company is so blessed that it can afford to ignore revenue from some places) Ikeja Electric is home to. Or how many such transformers have been knocked down for months (or probably longer) without any just cause. But it is left for the company to begin to interrogate some of these issues if the attitude of these members of staff involved in our communities’ transformer imbroglio is not Ikeja Electric’s corporate ethos. As a matter of fact, the company should get such members of staff copies of a book which I saw in traffic recently, How to win customers and keep them for life by Michael LeBoeuf if they are only acting out their personal scripts to show off their power and influence within the system. With such members of the staff, Ikeja Electric does not need any tutorial on how to lose customers and lose them for life.
But the only thing the company is exploiting is the fact that it is in a sector where competition is near impossible. But again, that can only be for some time because nothing lasts forever. The company is not only big; it is also in a critical sector of the economy. That is why the Federal Government cannot afford to leave it in the hands of a few Lilliputians whose mission one cannot even be sure of. If Ikeja Electric were to be manufacturing candy or beer or any commodity for that matter, it would have been a source of concern only to its owners. But it is in the interest of Ikeja Electric’s owners to rein in such thin gods in their system so that something would not do them too. It would interest the company’s owners to note that the public perception of them is not smiling at all. Readers that I have never met in my life but who have had cause to read of my travails in the company’s hands always keep asking how far with my case with Ikeja Electric. Even this newspaper’s editorial adviser, Prof Olatunji Dare, who is based abroad, asked the same question when last we spoke about three weeks ago. It is that bad.
I salute the tenacity of purpose, the audacity and the consistency of the communities’ team to Ikeja Electric. The team, led by Olorunto Damilola, Adekunle Oyekan and Idris Popoola took it upon themselves to collect debt for the DisCo when it seemed that was the issue. They soon found out that was not when the company kept on shifting the goal post after attaining targets set for them by it. The team also took the pains to eliminate the ghost electricity consumers that Ikeja Electric presented as part of those owing them on the transformer; a thing they used to inflate the debt on it. As a matter of fact, I decided to work with the team when I saw they were ready to pursue the matter to a logical conclusion rather than pander to the expectations of people who are hungry for apology and acting as if it is oxygen they are producing for customers. I appreciate such people who would not trade their ‘customership’ crowns for anything under the sun.
My gratitude also goes to some of the company’s staff who tried their best to get the matter resolved, in spite of the fact that they have not succeeded so far. But Ikeja Electric owners have a lot to do to change the orientation of some of these managers to prove that the way they approach their official duties is not their corporate ethos, or they themselves be changed. It is a misnomer for an individual (as in my case) to have been generating my electricity for over a year in a country where there is a government, and for no just cause. People who want to run the largest power distribution company in Nigeria in this century can do with a far better temperament, shun vindictiveness and stop acting god or behaving like village headmasters.
****Power minister and Ikeja Electric Logo
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