By AbdulGafar Alabelewe, Kaduna

Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA’s) of Government, including the Police and Military, owe the Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company accumulated electricity bills of over N35billion in the last six years, its management has disclosed.

Its Chief Compliance Officer, Lawal Lawal, who stated this while fielding questions from journalists, stated categorically said: “We are happy with the step government has taken to sort out the outstanding but the fact remains that there is huge outstanding.

“The Federal Government sent a team from the Ministry of Power to verify our MDAs. We are happy to report that more than 90 percent of our MDAs are metred so there is absolutely no reason that you are metred and you couldn’t pay.

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“We understand a lot of them are claiming liquidity and so on. But, at the end of the day, energy is energy. What is quite surprising is that a lot of these MDAs have generating sets that use diesel. For example, you don’t go to the GSM companies and said because your federal allocation does not come therefore you will not pay for their services.

“And then, some of these MDAs also rejected prepaid metres. Sometimes, it becomes double jeopardy for you when you disconnect some of them and you may not be allowed to live when you installed PPM for some.

“But, we are negotiating and we are happy with the level of commitment we are seeing from the government. What remains is the payment of this outstanding.”