Again, my case against the bitter pill
As at Friday when I was putting finishing touches to this piece, we have not had electricity in my area for about seven consecutive days. In fact, the light did not blink during the period. Yet, I am sure this would not reflect in my bill when the bill finally comes. This is because the bill, as I always say, is already ‘gazetted’ in the computer of the electricity firm, in this instance, the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC), as inherited from the former Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) which also inherited it from its predecessor, the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).
In case you are wondering where I am talking about, it is the Pleasure area of Oke-Odo, Agege in Lagos. I guess we share the same transformer with the General Hospital in Agege, which, ordinarily, should have been an advantage. It is almost always like that. As a matter of fact, we are getting ready for the usual experience in the rainy season when something must go wrong with the transformer and take days to resolve. Yet, behind my house are some other buildings enjoying by far more constant supply of electricity. People there are on a different transformer.
Whenever I write on this topic, I always cite personal experiences, particularly the 21 consecutive days when our light did not blink and another nine days of similar experience. Yet, I was slammed the usual bill of N11,000 plus, several years ago. I was not operating a bakery in the house and I had no special electrical gadget or equipment that guzzled current. Again, between December last year and January, this year, I had been billed N12,000 and N13,000, plus, respectively. Yet, they say my meter is not working. Yet, the power czars appear to usually defend such system by saying that there are approved amounts as bill for people without meters or those with faulty ones, depending on the kind of apartment they live in. What logic! As if it is not known that some people in face-me-I-face-you apartments have more electrical appliances that gulp power than some people living in so-called flats! The ideal thing should be for the electricity distribution companies (DISCOs) to change faulty meters, especially now that we are doing away with the old ones.
Now that the government has given the DISCOs the nod to hike tariff (which I hope Nigerians should keep rejecting until the needful is done), would IKEDC base my new bill on the same estimate that I had been contesting for more than three years? As a matter of fact, I even think they had somehow increased my bill because I was slammed N13,000 plus for January (wherever they got the figure from) well in advance of the February approved date by the government. Could that be a ploy to hoodwink me into coughing up more money when the February bill comes? Haba! No prophet has seen a vision for me to offer sacrifice, because that is what paying the reviewed tariff on the existing bill would tantamount to.
I am not opposed to tariff hike in the power sector, per se. Moreover, having improved power supply is good, but that, frankly speaking, is also not my main bother. As I have always argued, I am more particular about Nigerians paying for what they consume. If, as in the case I cited about my area where we have not had light for about seven consecutive days I will only pay for what I consume, I can live with that. I can always make up with my private supply of electricity. We are used to that kind of self-help in Nigeria: we provide our own water; our own roads in some cases, and so on. It is the DISCOs that should worry that some areas have been without light for so long because that should have implications for their revenue. But that is, other things being equal. The way things are, however, the DISCOs may not have to lose sleep over that with the distorted billing arrangement that allows them to allocate figures to people as bill, instead of bill based on actual consumption. Many Nigerians are of the opinion that this is the main reason why the DISCOs are foot-dragging on provision of prepaid meters.
This is why I support the protest organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) against the tariff hike. Those who say Labour should not arrogate to itself the right to champion the cause of the masses as it has done in this case have no point. The protest was a refreshing intervention. In any society, someone has to bell the cat. We used to have a vibrant civil society, especially in the military era and the groups did a lot in the struggle to send soldiers away from the country’s political scene. Unfortunately, many of them simply went to sleep the moment the soldiers left, thinking we have had democracy. But here we are today (not as that governor said during his thanksgiving service o), still having to battle with the fundamentals of democratic culture, after more than 16 unbroken years of civil rule. We should not pretend that we do not know that in our kind of situation, about 10 persons are clinging to one worker’s salary. If this is so, why can’t labour be at the vanguard of the protest?
The accusation is therefore diversionary. It is the usual excuse of the elite when things are not going their way. As they say, “there are no permanent friends or permanent foes, but permanent interest”. On this issue, Labour happens to be on the same page with majority of Nigerians. If we have had genuine democracy these past 16 years, we would not be where we are today. Indeed, if that was the case, no one would be justifying why electricity tariff must go up at this point in time, given our experiences with the sector these past years.
When the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, said Nigerians should trust him that the power firms will perform after the tariff hike, he must have forgotten that we have had similar promises in the past from the electricity firms. He must also have forgotten that prices hardly come down in Nigeria; so his expectation of a drop in tariff in four years’ time may be correct but Nigerians are not prepared to be that gullible without interrogating the assertion simply because it is coming from Mr Fashola. Once upon a time, the DISCOs asked people who were in a hurry to have prepaid meters to pay some money which would then be credited to their account. Many of those who paid are yet to get the meters years after. And there is nothing anybody can do about it beyond urging the DISCOs to roll out the meters.
Mr Fashola should understand that governance in Nigeria today, especially as it concerns the all-important power sector, has transcended his own antecedents or President Muhammadu Buhari’s personal integrity. That is why Nigerians want to take their destiny in their own hands. If, as Mr Fashola said, even his own relatives are asking him questions about this quinine that he wants us to swallow, that should tell him that something is not right somewhere. And what is not good is not good; there cannot be any other name for it. By going ahead with the tariff hike in spite of opposition from the National Assembly and even the court, the minister succeeded in doing what the typical government officials do: thinking that they are more patriotic than the rest of us, which is not so.
So, the earlier the minister understood Nigerians’ frustrations with the power firms, the better. Nigerians have come a long way with regards to promises by government officials that were never fulfilled. As a matter of fact, if many of the past promises had been fulfilled and past assurances had come to fruition, the minister himself would not have inherited the mess he inherited in the power sector.
For genuine investors interested in earning (emphasis on EARNING) their revenue, provision of prepaid meters should have been one of the first things the new players in the power sector, particularly the DISCOs, should have accorded top priority. If the Goodluck Jonathan’s government did not insist on that, Buhari’s government should. If they were truly serious about collecting money only for service rendered, two years is more than enough for them to carry out an enumeration of their customers with a view to ascertaining their number, meter and other requirements. I do not know of any paradigm in the world that would allow people to be billed based on rule of thumb for any type of service.
It bears restating that I would not have been this passionate about this matter if, as it is in the telecoms sector, I can simply migrate from a DISCO which I am dissatisfied with its beats and lyrics and go to dance my disco somewhere else. But this is not possible; the DISCOs are still essentially monopolies in their areas of influence, and, to that extent, the comparison of the power sector with the telecoms is baseless.
It is on this note that I humbly submit that no one should be worried about the threat by the players in the power sector that about 50,000 Nigerians would lose their jobs if they did not have their way. Let no one give the impression that the power firms are doing Nigerians a favour. That is the impression one gets when government officials say the tariff hike is still cheaper than fuelling our generators. The point is, many of us are not necessarily saying they should not increase tariff, what we are saying is that they should give us meters that would gauge what we consume, before anything else. Thereafter, we can begin to talk about tariff increase. Is that asking for too much?
