BREAKING NEWS, Power
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The Nigerian Military tops the list of debtors who fail to pay electricity bills to power firms
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Aug 31, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE federal government ministries, departments and agencies are owing Ikeja Electric a total of N5.276 billion as the cost of electricity supplied to them. The ministry of defence topped the list of customers owing the company, with a debt of N3.927 billion as at June 30, 2015.
The ministry of police affairs follows as the second biggest debtor on the list with a debt of N995.958 million. Other ministries indebted to the company include communication technology (N51.310 million), education (N4.496 million), works (N8.405 million), health (N2.646 million), information (N375,340.68) and finance (N12.260 million). The ministry of petroleum resources had yet to pay its debt of N395,613.54. Other debtors include ministries of transportation (N1.922 million), aviation (N156.182 million), agriculture (N241,453.14) and State Security Service (N13.079 million).
The Lagos State government, which has reduced its reliance on the national grid in recent years through its independent power plants, owes Ikeja Electric N102.138 million as of June 30.
The Ikeja Electric made the revelation following the ultimatum given to the electricity distribution companies to make remittance to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc for the energy the federal government supplied to them.
Similarly, Oladele Amoda, managing director, Eko Electricity Distribution Company, had late last month said that customers owed Discos huge debts. “Every month, we find that the bills we get from NBET for the energy we get are far higher than the revenue we generate from customers.”
Most of the 11 Discos in the country have in the past five months failed to make full remittances to government-owned Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc for the energy supplied to them, a development that has affected payment to generation companies, gas suppliers, and other stakeholders in the Nigerian electricity market.
Their inability to remit to the federal government made the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors, ANED, a group of 11 Energy Distribution Companies, say that they may begin disconnection of power supply to military formations as well as ministries, departments and agencies at every level of government as debts owed the power firms by the agencies stand at N26 billion.
Sunday Oduntan, director, research and advocacy, ANED, said military formations in Kaduna, Lagos, Oyo, Kwara and Ogun states were owing the Discos more than N10 billion out of the total debts. He said this indebtedness was impeding the smooth distribution of electricity and other operations.
A breakdown of the debts, showed that the military and MDAs of both federal and state governments were owing Kaduna Disco N6.7 billion; Abuja Disco, N7 billion; Ibadan Disco, N5.2 billion; Eko Disco, N2.3 billion; Benin Disco, N3.8 billion; and Kano Disco, N860 million among others.
“We need to understand that there are three layers in the value chain of electricity. We have the GENCOs; they generate electricity and sell to the federal government through the Transmission Company of Nigeria, which will then sell to us, DISCOs, 11 Distribution Companies across the country. This means that all the money we are collecting from distributing electricity to the public, we only retain less than 25 per cent of all money as our own. The remaining money goes to the other stakeholders.
“When you buy electricity, you supply. And the military, the MDAs and the people are either not paying their debts or stealing energy. We now suffer commercial and collection losses. In the case of non-payment, the greatest problem we have today is the Nigerian military. Giving the figures under the DISCOs or wherever you see military formations, they owe huge electricity debts and the problem we have is that, most of these military formations have refused to pay and they owe so much.
“I will just give you some of the examples. Under Ibadan DISCO, military owes N3.9 billion; in Kaduna DISCO, the Nigerian military owes N6.3 billion, and owes N263million in Kano DISCO. Our records also show that the military and MDAs are owing Abuja DISCO about N7 billion, just as the military and para-military debts under Eko DISCO stand at N1.9 billion. I am also aware that the military and ministries, departments and agencies at various levels of government owe the largest debts in all other DISCOs across the country and people are complaining about our services. “With these mind-boggling debts, we can’t invest in metering; we can’t invest in transformers and I’m worried that the system may collapse,” Oduntan said,
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