By Ali Elias
“This is to sincerely apologise for the disruptions in your electricity supply in the past week. We understand the inconvenience that comes with unstable power, and we deeply regret any inconvenience it has caused.
“The reason behind the inconsistency in supply on the 33KV Gaskiya feeder was due to a circuit breaker issue. The TCN technical team has successfully resolved the circuit breaker issue,” Kano Electricity Distribution Company.
This sort of excuse has become a recurring decimal from the DisCos across the nation, The excuses have been hinged on one thing or the other, an obvious indication that they did not prepare to put their house in order, or fully analyze the dynamics which would come with their requesting from the regulatory authority, NERC, for tariff increase.
The Benin Electricity Distribution Company, on their part, put the blame on their inability to supply the mandatory 20 hours of power to those on band A squarely on the Transmission Company of Nigeria as result of their load shedding.
But looking at this, the question someone asked was “did they not know of their operating environment. What’s a customers’ business with Transmission Company?
For Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, IBEDC, the culprit is partly “TCN system outages” and, partly “tripping on IBEDC feeders.”
What were the electricity companies anticipating; that they would just collect the revenue windfall due to the tariff increase without upgrading their system to render equivalent service?
Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, AEDC, is not left out in the gale of excuses on why they are short on target of delivering 20 hour power supply to their band A customers.
“This is to appeal to residents of Gwako, University of Abuja Staff Quarters, Giri, University of Abuja Permanent Site, Iddo Sauki, and Iddo Sabo, to bear with us as the prolonged power outage currently being experienced due to a technical fault at the Gwagwalada Transmission Station, owned by the Transmission Company of Nigeria.
“Also, customers on 4 X 15MVA 33/11KV Kukwaba Injection Substation are currently out of supply due to a technical fault, affecting residents of Games Village, Moshood Abiola National Stadium, The Eye Clinic, and its environs.
“The TCN maintenance crew and our dedicated engineering team are working tirelessly to rectify these faults and restore power supply as quickly as possible,” said AEDC, in an appeal to their customers as if their (DisCos) excuses are new and would make any new but annoying impact.
The NERC (Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, on allowing the increase from N68 per Kwh to N225 per Kwh, for customers on Band A made it compulsory for the DISCOS to deliver 20-hour power per day for them to put anyone on that scale. It also warned that failure to deliver the target would lead to a downgrade from the band.
Looking at the inefficiencies in the power system up to the time of this increase, we had in our earlier post questioned the ability of the DisCos to deliver the 20-hours power supply per day, set for them as a mandatory condition for the new tariff to be operative. Also raised is the power companies’ transparency in billing when they fall short of the mandatory power supply and NERC’s capacity to continuously monitor them to avoid their predatory and ravenous over billing of hapless Nigerians.