Time to Checkmate DISCOS’ Lawlessness, Impunity, Fleecing of Poor Nigerian Consumers, By Sola Olatunji 

One of the late journalism Alvant Garde, Dele Giwa’s article that I kept in my memory over several decades was titled: Nigeria, A Country where nothing works.

Several years after the publication of the master piece and the demise of the journalism icon who was killed in a letter bomb, Nigeria remains a country where nothing works. It remains a country where whatever goes up will never come down. It is a country dressed in flamboyant toga of impunity and arrant lawlessness.

Each time I look at every sector in Nigeria and the efforts of governments at various levels to build a country which every Nigerian can be proud of, I always end up remembering the Dele Giwa  summary that says much about the country.

I have been having sleepless nights recently over the lawlessness that has enveloped the electricity distribution company in Nigeria,  popularly known as DISCO and all I end up with is a flurry of anger, bitterness against a company that specializes in duping Nigerians of their hard earned money. And my simple conclusion is that DISCO is a fraud. Pure and simple!.

Like the way it’s done in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and other civilized societies, it’s the responsibility of DISCOS as utility companies to deploy electricity meters to households, free of charge.  It’s unthinkable that in Nigeria, Discos are fleecing vulnerable consumers, forcing them to buy parts of the infrastructure that should naturally enhance their service delivery. In this age of technology, Discos in Nigeria can’t be fleecing vulnerable electricity consumers in a fashion similar to criminal enterprise in the name of running a business in Nigeria.  This is unacceptable!

. In the US, for instance,  utility companies provide meters to households free of charge. It’s outlawed for any utility company to demand money for meters from any consumer. In the real sense of it, meter is part of the infrastructure needed by utility company to do appropriate billings of consumers, monthly or weekly of electricity consumed. It does not  make sense to ask consumers to buy equipment that should naturally enhance the delivery of their services.

But, contrastingly in Nigeria, Discos, utility companies are brazenly infringing on the rights of electricity consumers without consequences. Discos oppress, harass and threaten electricity consumers with power cut if they are able to provide electricity for a few days. They deploy their ladders to be cutting electricity and be blackmailing vulnerable consumers of indebtedness. The worst hit are the unmetered electricity consumers or consumers with faulty meters. They are quickly migrated to direct connection so that they can dupe them with obnoxious estimated billing of N90, 000 monthly without previous discussions when they didn’t provide electricity for up to 12 days in one month. To further their nefarious activities against the poor Nigerians, some of our  elite who mostly resides in the high brow areas of our cities, are  usually tagged as premium customers, yet there is no difference between the services they get from Disco and the one they offer to people in Ajegunle or Ojota. I don’t know the rationale between the word’ premium customers by Discos in a generators republic after 12 years of privatization of power in Nigeria?

Nigerian Electricity consumers are also aware of a state High Court pronouncement in Ugheli, Delta State, not too long ago,  that  estimated billing system is illegal and unacceptable in our laws in Nigeria which was contained in a ruling dated  8th,March ,2022. We are yet to hear of any contrary pronouncement on the matter, yet these utility companies have chosen to act brazenly, breaking our laws with reckless abandon, running business without morality in a civilised society  We are worried that despite this pronouncement by a court of competent jurisdiction, some greedy and law breakers in the name of business still take  delight in trampling on our laws on the guise of  running business which in itself is  similar or soaked in the  cobweb of criminality.

These utility companies have deliberately refused to meter their consumers’ homes but prefer smiling to the banks with obnoxious ‘estimated billing system by harassing consumers with power cut, which they didn’t provide in the first instance. They are using all manners of tactics to torment consumers, including some of their staff who act like mercenaries.

They infringe on the rights of consumers to know and be communicated to . They acted as the Lord in command and pushed their nefarious activities through vulnerable consumers almost at gun point. To them, they constitute the law on their own. They take delight in misinforming their consumers about the old PHCN. They act lawlessly as if they have their separate laws in Nigeria.

In this era of technology, when the whole world is at your fingertips, we are saying that electricity consumers in Nigeria should enjoy the same treatment consumers are enjoying elsewhere in the world as offered by Discos. We are also saying that this is a critical period in the history of Nigeria where consumers are faced with hyperinflation. It’s a period when big corporations and manufacturing leaders should emulate the patriotism of Allen ONYEAMA of Air Peace  by crashing prices of goods and services to stimulate the national economy.  This is a period in our country when the entire gamut of our society should run according to our laws, like the practice in civilised societies.