ORA is a Lagos community — Okota Residents Association, Zone A — which covers the unmetered tracks of Ikeja Electric, IE’s Okota, Lagos household electricity market. The area seethes with fury, over what the residents call I.E. “crazy bills” — which indeed they are.
So, on Saturday, May 12, at the compound of Mount Zion Acadamy, a private school in the community, two I.E. top staff came calling to explain the billing imbroglio: Aderonke Edet Udoh, the Okota Undertaking Manager for I.E. and Chukwuma, Energy Safe Supervisor, whose job is more closely connected with billing and disconnection of erring customers.
Mrs Edet Udoh, cool, collected and articulate, tried her best to explain I.E. wasn’t fiddling the bill it sends its irate customers, since those bills were automated, and based on some rigorous parameters.
Automation is neither here nor there. What comes out of the computer is as good as what was fed into it — remember the old garbage-in, garbage-out computer quip? But the parameters, which Mrs Edet Udoh insisted was Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)-sanctioned, had a more logical ring.
Mr. Chukwuma, on his own side, participated only as a side-kick, with Mrs. Edet Udoh doing most of the explanation. Still, you could see, in the two, a schizophrenic I.E: one (Edet Udoh) trying to adapt to customer-savvy service ethos (as every private company should do) and the other (Chukwuma) with the body language (even if benign) of the all-mighty, all-crushing, all-notorious NEPA of old, with the arrogance of federal might. Over all, however, the pair pulled off a decent show.
But even from their explanations, it was clear there was little fairness in I.E. billing. The company claims it meters transformers to determine the level of power consumed. That it now shares, by simple average, to all customer households, as their respective consumptions. That clearly is over-billing some customers for power not consumed and under-billing others for excessive power consumed. That cannot meet the muster of fairness.
The solution, of course, would be pre-paid metering. But according to Mrs Edet Udoh, it would come though she didn’t know when. Still, she assured the area was already 70 per cent metered, leading to the cynical riposte, from her pissed audience, that the un-metered customers were I.E’s fraudulent cash cows!
The gathering parted but the billing problem was unresolved. Indeed, the meeting parted hardly on a cordial note; and since then, the ORA social media platform has been ablaze with anger, at a perceived I.E, that renders little service but harvests illicit bills, on the pains of arbitrary disconnection.
O, the perceived notoriety of the area’s marketer, one Emmanuella, was echoed by almost everyone present. As arrogant and insensitive as they come, the gathering accused her of always gruffly telling complainants she had a revenue target to meet. But pray, what about the service that earns that revenue?
Let I.E look into its billing technique again, to achieve fairer billing. It should also fast-track its metering programme, for in that lies the ultimate solution.
If it doesn’t, it risks a serious blow-out with its furious market. Both I.E’s Alausa, Ikeja head office should take note; and so should NERC, and even its supervising Ministry of Works, Power and Housing.
A stitch in time saves nine.