SIR: This is to draw the attention of the relevant authorities to the unfair treatment and the corrupt practices being perpetrated by Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) at Akinyemi Ayede Community, Ring Road Ibadan.
These corrupt practices has been going on for a while now but took a new turn after a peaceful protest by residents of the community in January, to the office of IBEDC after the community was thrown into total darkness in October, 2021.
This experience was not the first of its kind which necessitated the peaceful protest. The residents’ decision to stage the peaceful protest was also consolidated when the private engineer contracted by the community to fix the faulty transformer, said the transformer was beyond repairs.
The corrupt practices include outrageous estimated billing of houses with or without meters; (they also select and isolate houses to be billed highly and or others to be billed very low or not billed all); they do not take reading of meters installed in houses with the claim that the meters are faulty; not supplying prepaid meters to those who applied and paid officially but can let their syndicates supply within days to those who are willing to pay exorbitantly for same.
This cut across their demographic coverage; there are people who have paid for theirs officially and for more than years years are yet to get the prepaid meters they paid for.
IBEDC also connives with private engineers to deceive unsuspecting communities that their transformers are beyond repairs or to be repaired with large amounts, etc. to milk the communities. This the spokesperson of IBEDC debunked as an allegation during the peaceful protest by the residents of Akinyemi Ayede Ring Road.
The denial was discovered to be a ruse when the regional manager reached out to one engineer (name withheld) to RENT the community a transformer to be used temporarily while the ‘beyond repair’ was repaired earlier this year.
They also victimise communities for protesting, either peaceful or otherwise, which obviously is what is being done to residents of Akinyemi Ayede Ring Road as this is being written.
This is the bulk of the SOS and the complaints. IBEDC without any official increase in tariff increased their estimated billing from about #5,400 to #12,500 (which is from #31. 73 to #64. 38 or thereabouts per unit) in June to about 12,500 in July, and later to 18,750 in September and October respectively and all of these within two months. The marketer in the community is also culpable because every time residents complain to her, she always says there’s nothing she can do, that the community is using the power serving Iyaganku Quarter’s residents, even though she knows that most people, if not all residing at Akinyemi do not have the capacity to use equivalent of 50 percent of the power used at Iyaganku Quarters.
She is also aware that at least once a month, for three to four days when it rains, power goes off in the area, and they will take their time to restore power to the area while the same Iyaganku will have their power on.
As at the time of writing this, we have had almost 24 hours of blackout at the community while there has been power at Iyaganku and neighbouring communities.
The community needs intervention now to know why IBEDC changed their tariff from #31.72 to #64. 38 and #65. 82 and these done within two months (July to September), and protection in the future so that IBEDC won’t take it out on them for making public their corrupt practices.
- Augustine Unaji,
Akinyemi Ayede Ring Road Community,
Ibadan.