NERC and meter fees – Nigerian Tribune

At a breakfast meeting organised by the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce in Lagos on Thursday, September 25, 2014 the Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Sam Amadi, said consumers were not supposed to pay for pre-paid meters. He pointedly stated that the payment made by the consumer had not altered the fact that the meters belonged to the Distribution Companies (DISCOS).   He went further to say that the payments must be refunded to the consumers.

Some months earlier, Amadi, in like manner, had announced that with effect from May 1, 2014, electricity consumers were authorised to refuse to pay the service charge for any month in which they did not enjoy power supply for 15 days either continuously or cumulatively. He, however, gave a condition precedent that must be satisfied before the consumer could exercise such a right of refusal – the culpability of the DISCO must be fully established. We subjected the nebulous directive to a critical examination in one of our previous comments.   We demanded to know whether power supply for one or two hours in a whole day would be equated with supply for the entire 24 hours or whether consumers were to base their claim on availability of electricity for 360 hours that make 15 days. We questioned the sincerity of the commission and sought to know why it did not give an instruction for the reduction or outright stoppage of the fixed charge.

The Meter Maintenance Charge was a very contentious issue before the intervention of the NERC. The commission declared the payment improper and unlawful and put an end to it. The people heaved a sigh of relief and the organisation was widely eulogised for serving the interest of the public. The euphoria that greeted the stoppage of the illegality had hardly evaporated when another payment that was not tied to any particular service – the fixed charge – was introduced. The NERC chairman, who had cultivated the posture of a defender of people’s rights, rose in stout defence of the fixed charge which he described as a universal best practice that was not peculiar to Nigeria. It was thus another disappointing experience in which the regulatory agency threw its weight behind the substitution of one form of extortion with another.

The subsisting arrangement under which the consumer has to pay for the prepaid meter – which is the property of the service provider – is another evidence of the anomalous situation that prevails in Nigeria. The people are in a captive market in which the seller, rather than the consumer, is king. The buyer only has the Hobson’s choice. In a situation of inefficient service in which the overhyped privatisation has failed to fulfil expectations, consumers are being fleeced in different ways. They pay through the nose to replace a stolen transformer. They bear the cost of repair of a faulty or vandalised transformer. They pay for the prepaid meter while nothing is offered in return for the analog meter recovered from their premises.

Now that Amadi has said that payments made for prepaid meters must be refunded, Nigerians will be waiting for the fulfilment of the promise. A scheme which he said was put in place under the privatisation programme made it voluntary for the consumer to pay for the prepaid meter while the DISCO should pay back with interest.   In the light of his revealing statement that “most of the DISCOS are far below 50 per cent in terms of metering,” what alternative is available to the consumer than to pay for the pre-paid meter so as to escape from the crushing burden of estimated consumption and consequent ‘crazy bills’? In an atmosphere of endemic corruption, what other choice is there for the consumer who has been groaning under the yoke of arbitrariness?   How logical is it to ask people who have no choice to decide whether to pay or not to pay for an item that is sorely needed?

The performance of organisations in many sectors of Nigeria’s economy is far below par because the regulatory agencies created to oversee their operations have not been giving a good account of themselves. This is why public good has, most of the time, been subordinated to private objectives and the people’s interests have continued to suffer. There is an urgent need to subject the performance of   regulators to constant appraisal if there is to be a noticeable improvement in service delivery in the different spheres of national life. Amadi has raised the hope that payment for prepaid meters will come to an end after what he called the declaration of the transitional electricity market in November.   Nigerians are waiting to see whether it will be the beginning of a change for the better or another unfulfilled promise.