IE and COVID-19 hunger

By Hardball

Femi Gbajabiamila, Speaker of the House of Representatives, must hear this: Ikeja Electric (IE) appears down with a most vicious strain of COVID-19 hunger.  So it’s, with venom, blitzing its “estimated billing” customers!

But whatever happened to Speaker Gbajabiamila’s COVID-19 season emergency power proposed rebates?  Or, for that matter, to the then immediate pre-COVID-19 season Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) “repeal” of “estimated billing”?

Indeed, NERC had announced, effective February 20, it was repealing “estimated billing” for unmetered electricity consumers, partly to save a section of the market from being billed a premium, for a supply of premium darkness; and partly to galvanize electricity distribution companies (DisCos) into providing their customers pre-paid meters.

Shortly after, COVID-19 emergency dawned, and there came the Gbajabiamila legislative lullaby, of a possible two-month power bill relief, during the earliest days of the Abuja-Lagos-Ogun lockdown.

Whatever happened to all those, IE would appear unimpressed as it, with a vengeance, appears dishing out its estimated bills with a vengeance befitting acute COVID-19 corporate starvation, with little or no regard for the actual power supplied.

Take the case of this customer, with Account Number 0100218678.  For the month of April, IE awarded a bill of N18, 279. 30.  In a billing temper that spoke of a reckless and ruthless billing bazaar, it chalked up total indebtedness to N40, 513. 09, adding N18, 279. 30, disputed bills, for past supplies of premium darkness, it keeps on pushing forward in its books.

Still, flashback to the IE bill for March 2020.  Customer 0100218678 got billed for 12, 654. 90.  So, between March and April 2020, the bill jumped by N5, 624. 40.  Yet, no upsurge in power supply.  At best, it was the normal level of supply.  At worst, there was a slight drop, caused by days of shambolic supplies, for which IE gave no concrete or logical reasons.

What is more?  During that same corresponding period, the customer, no thanks to COVID-19, took a 50 per cent pay cut.  But from this pay cut, he must fund IE’s 44 per  cent hike in power bill!  Talk if COVID-19 corporate hunger and customer anger!

Yeah, IE is starving and is hungry.  But its corporate hunger, coupled  with customary greed and reckless billing techniques, could well lead to vicious social anger, that could well endanger its business environment.

Which is why the Federal Government should rein in these reckless DisCos. They are not only corporates that by their bad behaviour, glory as social scums — or how else could you explain corporates, whose business growth strategy is nothing but in-your-face cheating, and threatening customers with disconnections because they refuse to pay for darkness in lieu of electricity? — but also economic saboteurs, in a most trying period of Nigeria’s COVID-19 challenge.

NERC should call IE to order.  It can’t continue to rip off its customers using a repealed billing method.  If it continues, it would constitute  clear and present danger to a peaceful business environment.  That would be a lose-lose!