The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has described as
criminal the lack of accountability in the N2.9bn metering intervention
fund created by the Federal Government in 2011, saying the matter will
be reported to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for proper
investigation.
The Chairman, NERC, Dr. Sam Amadi, disclosed this on Thursday when he
paid a courtesy visit to the headquarters of Punch Nigeria Limited in
Ogun State.
The sum was given to the electricity distribution firms by the
Federal Government in 2011 as part of the subsidy for package for
electricity consumers to closing the huge gap of customers without
meters.
However, the impact of the intervention has not been felt with
millions of electricity consumers without meters, leading to the power
distribution firms resorting to estimated billing, whereby majority of
customers pay for what they don’t consume.
Amadi described the development as a crime against the consumers, saying the issue remained important and could not be ignored.
NERC had, in the past, blamed the electricity distribution companies
for jeopardising efforts to close the metering gap despite the provision
of the metering intervention fund by the government. This was before
the firms were privatised.
“We are still going to write to the EFCC and other relevant agencies.
It is a crime against the consumers. Since time does not run against
crime, we will still go ahead and prosecute those who got the money. The
money was given to the Discos before we came on board,” Amadi said.
He said a meeting had been called to address the issues surrounding
the fund, which was part of the subsidy incorporated into the Multi Year
Tariff Order.
“We told them (Discos) to submit to us a report on how the money was
spent; and only half of the Discos did. For those that submitted, their
books were not convincing; so, we disallowed them,” he said.
According to the NERC boss, the money did not go through the commission, hence it cannot say how it was allocated.
He described the metering situation in the country as a legacy
crisis, saying that NERC’s condition that the Discos could only review
their tariff when they had presented a metering plan, which must be
implemented within 18 months, was rejected as the firms argued that they
were experiencing rising personnel cost and were not generating much
revenue.
The situation, he said, had continued to promote estimated billing by the Discos.
“This issue of estimated billing is beyond our control because the
regulator don’t get to know until the affected consumer reports,” he
said.
