SoS – Sam on Saturday
Electricity bands and the bandwagon syndrome
Published by Saturday Tribune on 6 April, 2024
First, it is enough to wonder if those Nigerians who were hitherto fretting are done with their angry ripostes for that call by Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, the Nigerian Minister of Power, for an upward review of electricity tariff in the country. Whether they are done with their boisterous gragra or not, Mr. Adelabu has succeeded; he has successfully and tactfully engineered this eye-popping 240 per cent hike in electricity tariff. He has not just made it happen; he has force-fed us the new rates like determined mothers did to their unwilling babies. Forget the official postulation that the mountainous hike in tariff is, as claimed, for those enjoying 24 or little less hours of electricity power supply. Just look away from that official posturing because official positions are usually not in the best interest of the masses. More importantly, the number of Nigerians in that 24 hours Band A will not give the electricity distribution companies and their promoters the kind of money they are eyeing from Nigerians. In this rancid encounter, Bayo Adelabu has come out tops and he is the winner in the band brouhaha that has swooped on Nigeria.
It’s a good thing that the government has brought to our knowledge the amount of people they said were in the premium band, that band which everyone wished they were in. They said that only about 15 percent of electricity consumers in the country are in this enviable category called Feeder Band A. Those of us who are in the other neglected bands would only be angling and wishing we were there to know what it feels like. Now, using the title of the 1975 book by Nkem Nwankwo, we would, as a people, place ourselves in the various categories in which the electricity supply system has divided us. We would say: My Mercedes is Bigger than Yours. If you’re in Band A, you will know of a fact that your Mercedes is naturally bigger than mine because, obviously, I am not in Band A. I am also hoping that I will not erroneously be billed like the man and woman in Band A. I am also not in Band B because I don’t even get up to 10 hours of electricity daily in most cases. I also hope to not be lumped with the “big men’’ in Band C because this is neither here nor there.
Seriously speaking, many dwellers in various developed neighbourhoods and communities in Ibadan, the legendary capital of Oyo State, for instance, can testify that they do not belong to any band. This is because they are so deprived of electricity that the electricity distribution companies cannot confidently categorise them. There are people who say that they hardly get up to four hours of energy supply in a week in their respective communities. Many live radio programmes in Ibadan are usually inundated with telephone calls by people who either want their dilapidated roads fixed or plead that electricity to their communities be restored. These are quite common things heard so very often in Ibadan. Other towns and cities in the country might be better in terms of daily energy supply, but since 15 percent of Nigerians are the percentage of people they told us get energy supply for up to 22 to 24 hours daily, the figure in actual terms is better imagined when juxtaposed with the country’s population. From the 15 percent claimed, it therefore means that energy supply in the country is fantastically worse than we thought was the case.
One of the nagging developments about this electricity matter is that many Nigerians in the Band A supply chain are mostly the privileged of the country. The big institutions belong there too but they don’t pay! We’ve read reports of their electricity debts… they’re too big to pay. The few people outside the really privileged, who fall into this circle, might be those who have fortuitously found themselves in that band. The people in Feeder Band A are usually the people who had been properly metered already. In one neighbourhood in Ibadan, the distribution companies went as far as installing some devices on electricity poles to be able to properly monitor energy consumption vis-a-vis the money coming in. Charging people on this band N225 per kWh of electricity supplied means that such people should enjoy nearly 24 hours of electricity supply daily. If they do not enjoy this, they have the right to sue the distribution company because they have been charged for 24-hour supply not supplied. That is what the new billing system means.
In a classic example, a Band A electricity consumer wrote to Eko Electricity Distribution Company, complaining that he was actually supplied just a little above 12 hours of energy in 24 hours. He told them that the downtime in his Band A community for the period was 11 hours and 55 minutes in 24 hours. From a simple analysis, this would mean that either the Band A is not Band A as claimed by the electricity distribution company or the company is incapable of 24-hour energy supply. In both cases, the people who had been charged N225 per kWh of energy as Band A either have been fleeced or they have just given money away to the electricity distribution company by paying for downtime. The distribution companies in Nigeria reportedly grew their revenue by 28.2 percent to N1.1trillion in 2023 and we can now see that this is largely due to the over-billing of customers. Nigerians without pre-paid meters know what they pass through with estimated billing. These profits by Discos are regardless of the reported incessant collapse of the nation electricity grid and epileptic power supply in most parts of the country.
This example underscores the agitation of Nigerians on this new tariff regime. It raises the concern expressed by some Nigerians that the Ministry of Power is coming in with a general tariff hike through the back door. Consumers at various levels across the country have decried the handling (more like pampering) of the Discos by the government, especially the obvious fact that policies in this important sector of our national life have favoured the Discos more than Nigerians and Nigeria. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has been acting typical of all the other Nigerian government agencies. NERC does not follow the rules and prescriptions in its laws regarding consumer satisfaction. NERC does not care what manufacturers say and how it affects the economy.
Understanding these things is important and it would help Nigerians have proper knowledge of the real motive of the government in this matter. From the body language of government, we can see that electricity is going the way of telephony before GSM – It is not for the poor. There appears to be a lot of grey areas in the billing that has just been introduced and I strongly think that there might be backlash from some quarters in the near future. A lot of Nigerians are taking steps to monitor what has just been introduced to, among other things, justify the money they are paying. This is even more so because the electricity distribution companies are privately-owned and they were set up as profit-making ventures. So, they must render the services for which they are collecting immense amounts of money from their customers. On this matter, many Nigerians are tied together with one strong rubber band. That is perhaps the only band for which we all agree that there is no controversy.
Which band is your band sef…? Many Nigerians do not know where they belong. There is band confusion from what’s happening. From the energy supply pattern, a lot of people have no specific place (band) to call their own. All are rolling about just like a coin in a chinaware. It’s a band syndrome. Some have joined the bandwagon simply to comment on what the NERC did and there is hardly any articulate direction as we do not have people to speak for us. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is plain simply useless to the people. Artisans are crying, businesses are crashing, manufacturers are closing shops, technicians are disappearing all due to poor power supply yet government is just baying for money from these same people. There was a NLC.
About The Author
