Electricity users have declared that after eight years of privatization in Nigeria’s electricity sector, the sector’s overall performance appears fluid and poisonous, with little or nothing to celebrate.
Customers also claim that distribution corporations, often known as DISCOs, are defrauding them by making them to pay for distribution transformer acquisitions.
Purchasing recycled cables, among other things, with no refunds.
Kunle Kola Olubiyo, President of the Nigeria Consumer Protection Network and Member of the National Technical Investigative Panel on Power System Collapses, System Stability, and Reliability, stated the viewpoint of power consumers in a statement ( June, 2013 ).
According to Olubiyo, Nigeria currently lacks proper customer data for the electrical demand and supply business, which he estimates to be between 8 and 12 million end consumers in the country.
Saying, “Exactly 8 years ago the Power Sector was Privatised and there was a Paradigm shift from Public Sector driven Business model to a supposedly Private sector driven Business model. ..
Taking a glossary look at the general performances of the Power Sector, the picture is fluid and toxic and there is little or nothing to celebrate.
“Since , the year 2013 several DisCoys claims that they don’t have the money to carry out Customers Enumeration , Asset Enumeration And Enumeration of Customers House Holds to House hold ,
Using Properties and Landmarks vide GPS and Remote Satellite for Real time Customers Data.
“As we speak today, Nigeria don’t have an Accurate Customers Data for the Electricity Demand and Supply Industry Which is Conservatively put at between
8 Million – 12 Million End Users of Electricity in Nigeria.
“As we speak, Electricity Consumers on daily basis are forced or conscripted to pay for Purchases of Distribution Transformers , Buy the Recycling Cable, Buy Aluminum Conductors, D I Iron / Line Materials insulators , Buy Armoured Cable, Buy Uprisers Cable, Buy Incomes and Outcomers Cable, Buy Feeder Pillars ,Buy Feeder Pillars Fuses, And other Accessories, Pay Electrical Contractors to carry Installation, Pay through their noise to get the Officials of the Utility Companies and Government Officials to approved the Diagnostic Reports,
Get the Transformer Soaked,Tested,
Energised and then Commission for use.
“At the end of it all, the End -Users don’t get refund for their Investments at the Downstream which runs into several
Billions of Dollars, Pre and Post Privatization era” he said.
Olubiyo maintained that the Indian Variants of Power Sector Privatisation exercise sold to Nigerians in the year 2013 has intrinsically become worst than a Delta Variant of Novel Corona Virus.
According to him, the Post Privatization bitter experiences of the end users of electricity in Nigeria has been reduced to a scam of sort, stressing ‘it seems to the End Users that Nigerians have been sold a dummy’.
