Estimated reading time: 11 minute(s)
Sodiq Ojuroungbe
The residents of Olomore Dogo community Development Association area of Abeokuta in Ogun state on Wednesday stormed the office of Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company to protest an alleged illegal billing and exorbitant charges by the company.
PLATFORM TIMES reports that the residents in their hundreds stormed the IBEDC office in Idi-Ori area of Abeokuta, the state capital.
The residents accused the officials of IBEDC of bringing exorbitant bills for an unused consumption.
The Olomore Dogo CDA chairman, Taofeek Omosanya during the protest lamented that the residents of the communities have been enduring pains and anguish due to the alleged “irresponsible attitude” of the IBEDC officials.
Omosanya complained that the exorbitant bills bought by the IBEDC officials does not warrant the amount used monthly.
He exclaimed that some of them with working post-paid meter were not read and this had resulted into estimated billing for electricity not consumed.
He said, “Every electricity consumption customers should have a pre-paid meter which we have not seen in our community till date.
“The epileptic supply of electricity in our areas does not warrant the extortion billing we are receiving because it was not consumed as given, the pre-paid meter user are at the advantage while post-paid user are paying through their nose.
“We the resident of the above named community development association write to express our dismay with the non commitant service your company is rending to us.”
The Chairman however explained that they were supposed to have received pre-paid meter as ordered by the federal government.
“We have come to realized that the Federal government of Nigeria had said that every electricity consumption customers should be given a pre-paid meter which we have not seen in our community till date.
“The electricity consumption bill was supposed to be stamp with the Customer Relation Officer name and mobile number but it had not been so far over a year since Mrs. Seun had left as our market.
One of the members of the community, Ibrahim Ogunbona, lamented that there have been erratic electricity in the community which does not equal the bills.
He said, “If we quantify the hours we are using light in a month, it can’t reach 3 days. How will they still be bringing the same amount.
“The money was supposed to drop, but whether we use it or not, we still get the same amount every month.
“We were told that they want to bring prepaid, they did enumeration. In my house alone we are paying almost 30k monthly. They separated each apartments and each apartment is paying 8,500 and all that.
He pleaded that, “We want the IBEDC to either remove our light and stop bringing exorbitant bills or they should do the thing that spoilt in our transformer.”
Reacting to the allegations, the IBEDC manager, Sunday Taiwo said the distribution company would have preferred to dialogue with the community before the protest.
Taiwo noted that the prepaid meters may not reach the community as regard the scheme the FG implemented.
“FG claimed they released based on band. You are neither on band A or B. If the meter is coming through that scheme, you can’t get a prepaid meter. But the old scheme is in place from 15th December, 2021, you can track that online and make payment when you are eligible.”
He explained further that the bills vary contrary to the claim by the community.
He stressed, “The bill in December is not the same with what you collect in November.
“Most of the transformers are metered and we know the consumption of those transformers monthly. Those meters have facilities that can communicate with us even when we don’t go there. They have telecommunications gadgets that every point in time we can know the condition of the transformers.
“Meters only capture the usage and not the number of hours.”
The manager however urged members of the community to have the names and ‘contact of customer relations officers.’
“Each flat should have a separate bill. It will be injustice for someone with many flats to be getting same bill with some with just a flat. What we have done is to make every flat to bill so that there can be equity and justice,” the manager said.
