Politically speaking, Nigerians received the news of the removal of electricity subsidy for Band A customers with great shock because they are still struggling to cope with the same policy that was introduced in the petroleum sector. The unit price of electricity was adjusted from N68/kWh to N225/kWh, representing an increase of about 231% for 15% of its customers.

The government seems hell-bent on increasing its revenue by all means and impoverishing her citizens in compliance with the neo-liberal policies of the Bretton Woods institutions, which is worrisome because those pressuring 3rd World countries like Nigeria to implement these policies extend subsidies to critical sectors of their economy like transportation, aviation, agriculture etc.

This harsh policy validates the Marxian postulation that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” This is due to the existence of a struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.      

Meanwhile, in ensuring that Discos fulfil their part in implementing this new policy, the Regulator rolled out a new set of Service Delivery Commitments for the Discos in its NERC Supplementary Order to the MYTO 2024 some of the provisions require that,

The Disco shall set up a rapid response team to ensure effective service delivery on the committed minimum hours of supply to each service Band commencing with Band A feeders effective from 3rd April 2024.

Also, the team shall ensure timely response to customer’s complaints, fault clearing and alignment with TCN regional teams for effective load management and optimized dispatch to respective feeders.

In addition, Disco’s shall publish the contact numbers of the service rapid response team for each customer cluster/business unit on its website and circulate the same to the customers via bulk SMS , commencing with Band A  clusters no later than 12 noon, Friday 5th April 2024.

While there is a general outcry against this policy, the implementation of the above provisions will be difficult for the Discos considering the current realities in terms of their performance.

Using IBEDC as a case-study because I am their customer, it is safe to say that the Discos have not invested enough in the franchise they inherited. Their fault-clearing teams use mini-vans (‘Korope’) and motorcycles to convey staff to fault locations, which falls below prescribed safety standards.

Another observation is that most of them have abolished shift duties for their technical teams as part of cost-saving measure, which negates the need to reduce fault-clearing time because technical personnel are not available to clear faults that occur after official closing hour (6pm or 1800hrs) making customers to be in darkness until the following day. Please note that the above assertions are empirical and verifiable.

The reason for drawing the attention of the Regulator to the above situation is for them to compel the Discos to take necessary steps and create a conducive environment for the above service delivery commitments to be implementable.

If this is not done, the envisaged revenue will not be realized because if a Band A customer gets less than 20 hours of power supply daily, it will also translate to a reduction in the revenue that will be generated.

It will be a Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) situation, which can only be remedied by improved service delivery except they want to keep short-changing Nigerians, their regular trademark (apologies to Abami Eda)!