He said, “Since the takeover, we have not billed them beyond 80 percent of the electricity supplied to us by the Market Operator. For instance, from January to December 2015, we received 3578Gwh of electricity but the energy billed within the same period is 2865Gwh, thereby showing a billing efficiency of 80 per cent.”
The decision of the Senate followed a motion by Senator Dino Melaye who relied on a point of order to accuse the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) of astronomical billing of its customers in and around the Federal Capital Territory.
He said that, “The unfortunate thing is that even when there is no electricity supply for a week, those without meters are still charged and forced to pay. The solution is that AEDC should provide meters to all consumers in the community; this will eliminate the issue of over billing and avoidable conflict between the company and consumers.”
He said, “We have in our custody, three suspected vandals of AEDC equipment; these are suspects that we have been monitoring because we have observed that these vandals have taken their activities to the satellite towns, within FCT.”
Ogunbiyi said, “We have listened to all the complaints from people across the state and I want to assure you that we will sack any of our staff found wanting in the discharge of his or her duties such as illegal collection, extortion of money from our customers and other illegalities.”
Bello explained that the FCT’s geometric expansion has exceeded all plans and expectations, adding that, “it is very clear even from our data and your records that the way in which the city has been expanding within the last two decades, we are talking of an area with a population running into six million already which is overstretched.”
The AEDC’s action runs contrary to the Federal Government’s directive that distribution companies should not disconnect estates, communities and local governments over debts owed by individual customers.
“Suffice it to inform that the State House electricity bill for 2016 alone as forwarded by Abuja Electricity Distribution Company for State House Abuja was N252 million, with another outstanding liability of over N300 million for State House, Lagos facilities. Clearly, the provision in the 2016 Budget could not accommodate this.”
Mutalib, who decried the high level sharp practices in the area, said, “The illegal electrical connection practices is so much here that have been trying to educate them on the dangers of quackery as practiced by non electricity staff.”
The power company said that in sharing whatever amount of power allocated to it daily, it had to concentrate the largest proportion of it on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
