The Chairman of the House of Representatives Ad-Hoc committee investigating the expenditure in the electricity sector, Mr. Ibrahim Al-Mustapha Aliyu has called for more efforts in providing electricity meters to Nigerians.
Al-Mustapha made the call as the Acting Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Commission, Mr. Yusuf Ali appeared before the Ad-Hoc committee, in Abuja.
He said that “despite the fact that estimated billing was illegal, NIgerians continue to be billed illegally.”
He said only one per cent of Nigerians are covered with metres till date.
The Chairman also said that customers have been complaining about service delivery and sharp practices by distribution companies.
He noted that the committee is working towards meeting the yearnings of the people.
Mr. Aliyu also emphasized that the tariff across the bands and the service delivery needs to be improved.
The Acting Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Commission, Mr. Yusuf Ali while responding to questions admitted the commission is aware of the sharp practices of the Discos.
Ali however said that the Discos had to find a way of billing customers without meters.
“Sir, unfortunately, yes we are aware. The office has been indaunated with complaints from customers with regards to service delivery. What we will like to note is that in most cases especially in band A, we have Internet of things metres on the feeders to help us track the service quality. So we are able to actually compare the data submitted by the customer with what we have observed on the network. And as I mentioned earlier, any instances where we observe a disco delivering a service lower than what is advertised, not only do we downgrade the feeder, we also have a compensation mechanism,” Mr. Ali said.
He said that the commission issued a cap for non meters customers to check over billing and issue sanctions.
Mr. Ali said that the commission now issues feeders every month to check sharp practices.
He added that the commission has issued sanctions to three discos, Abuja, Eko and another one.