Electricity consumers owe IBEDC N52.1bn in Kwara — Official

Electricity consumers in Kwara state are owing the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company PLC about N52.1 billion, its management said on Tuesday.

The management of IBEDC had in May, alerted electricity consumers within its franchise area to expect an imminent blackout in June due to a backlog of unpaid electricity bills.

It said the market operator, a unit in the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), was planning to disconnect its feeders from the national grid due to poor remittances.

Giving a breakdown of the company’s revenue loss data during a stakeholders engagement in Ilorin, Kwara state on Tuesday, the company’s Lead media relations, Olori Busolami Tunwase disclosed that electricity consumers in Jebba topped the chat with an outstanding of N25.8billion.

She said consumers in Baboko followed with N18.9 billion while those in the Challenge district owed the sum of N7.4 billion.

Tunwase regretted that the huge debt profile from Kwara is hindering the company from fulfilling its obligations to its market operators, assuring “that when payment is made service will definitely improve.”

She, however, urged consumers of electricity who intended to procure new pre-paid metres to shun third parties so as not to be caught in the web of illicit metres assuring that IBEDC will flood the market with metres.

IBEDC’S Regional Manager, Engineer Gabriel Eze said the huge junk of the outstanding were from government ministries, departments and agencies including the Nigeria Air Force, Navy and Army.

He urged the consumers to cooperate with the company’s staff who were assigned to clear the weeds that would be disrupting the electric wire that convey electricity to areas of supply.

Kwara State Chairman, Nigerian Electricity Regulations Commission (NERC), Mr Adeleke Ajanaku said his commission is daily being inundated with poor attitudes of IBEDC’S staff towards electricity consumers urging the management to call their staff to order.

Many Consumers at the meeting complained that they had paid for pre-paid metre without being given while others said that their communities have been put in darkness for more than six months because the IBEDC staff had refused to install their transformers which they bought to replace the old ones or the one given to them by the government.

On Wednesday, in a story titled ‘6 Things to know about new EFCC chairman’, we referred to Mohammed Abba Umar as the Director of Operations of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, who was directed to assume the headship of the anti-graft agency following the suspension of Abdulrasheed Bawa as the chairman of the commission. We have since discovered that Umar is no longer the Director of Operations of the agency and therefore not the designated person directed to assume the post of the Acting Chairman of the EFCC. The Director of Operations of the agency, who was directed to take over from Bawa as the acting chairman, is Mr Abdulkarim Chukkol. We, therefore, apologise to the officers concerned for the incorrect information.