Ogun Communities protest IBEDC exploitative activities, seek replacement of transformers
Residents of various communities on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in Ogun State are protesting what they described as “rent-seeking practices” of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company and warned it to address their demands or face public action.
The communities scattered in Mowe, Ibafo and Maba areas have accused IBEDC of poor service, non-maintenance of transformers, arbitrary bills and sometimes intimidation, using armed officials of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps to disconnect residents.
Whereas most of the transformers were purchased and installed by the communities, with a few supplied by the Ogun State Government, IBEDC merely energised them for a fee, and rarely attended to faults emanating from them, but would return to distribute bills to the communities who borne the cost of repair.
Besides poor power supply and exploitative bills, the community leaders said that IBEDC officials rarely attend to faults such as broken distribution and insulator breakdown on transformers in the communities.
For instance, residents of Maba community have written to IBEDEC on the 11/0.415kV distribution substation opposite GOFAMINT, along Maba Road, Aseese Ogun State, on several occasions but no action was taken by the corporation, despite the community affected by this outage’s compliance with the NESI obligations of electricity consumers on prompt fault reportage.
The petition on service disruption signed by the Protem Chairman of the community, Mr. Biyi Adegoroye and the Scribe, Mr. Lateef did not spur prompt investigation, remediation and restoration of service to the affected consumers by IBEDC.
On March 25, this year the same 500kVA 33/0.415kV transformer which was bought by the community in 2010 suffered insulator breakdown due to overload, but IBEDEC officials at Wowe Station failed to take any action, compelling the community to tax themselves to fix it for about N500,000. The same transformer has been repaired on two previous occasions at the cost of N280, 000 and N250, 000.
Despite the fact that a mail was sent to FCCPC and Customer Service of IBEDEC Ibadan that the fault has left over 250 billed customers without power supply for more than eight weeks, power has not been restored to the affected consumers.
“It bears stating that the bulk of the power distribution infrastructure in Aseese-Maba community (about six transformers in all) were provided and maintained by the community over the years. The particular transformer that is now faulty was acquired by the community around 2010. We only request IBEDC not to abdicate its responsibility and to show good faith by not just only coming around monthly to distribute bills without distributing electricity; and to receive payments.
“We are emboldened to escalate this matter to FCCPC because the electricity industry regulator, NERC, has always emphasised that it is not the responsibility of electricity customers or any community to buy, replace or repair electricity transformers, poles and related equipment used in the supply of electricity,” the petition said.
The community has earlier registered their displeasure at and objected to “the B16H tariff classification assigned to our community in the October 2020 electricity bill. Our understanding of this tariff class is that it implies that we receive 16 hours of power supply on a daily basis. Nothing can be further from reality. By the peculiar arrangement of rationing power supply to the Aseese-Maba community, we submit that we do not receive a cumulative 16 hours of power supply in three days (72 hours).
“We confirm that IBEDC only held a consultative forum at the Mowe office after the bills had been distributed. This is indicative that IBEDC has reached a decision prior to holding the consultative forum. This is a clear negation of the NERC guidelines for implementing the Service Based Tariff Structure. Excerpts from NERC press release in this regard is reproduced below:
Under the Service Based Tariff Structure, DISCOs can only review tariffs for customers under the following conditions: Customers are consulted and communicated a guaranteed level of electricity service by the DISCOs based on hours of supply. Customers are metered. No estimated billing through the strict enforcement of the capping regulation. This means that unmetered customers will not experience any cost increase beyond what is chargeable to metered customers in the same area.
Harmony Area Community Development Association Chairman, Mr. Ajisafe lamented the exploitative attitude of IBEDC, stating that the corporation’s consultative meetings with community leaders have been fruitless.
