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...60 days to BEDC exit.
Edo Civil Society Organisations have always raised the issue of criminal activities of the operations of the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) overtime.
It will interest us to know their criminal operations transcends beyond the issuance of estimated bills to customers wherein they want to reap where they never sowed.
The bigger criminal operations of the BEDC is the stealing or pilfering of monies collected from customers which they don't remit to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) and the under declaration of true number of customers on their network
Let us attempt to break it down for all to grasp. BEDC do not prepay for electricity, they only collect revenue on behalf of the value chain having received electricity from TCN.
The value chain consists the Generation Companies (GenCos), Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Distribution Companies (DisCos) and Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria (GACN)
What the BEDC does is to receive electricity from TCN and distribute to end users then collect revenue from electricity customers and remits same to NBET who now shares it among the value chain after paying for gas supplies.
Invoices are submitted to NBET by the GACN, TCN, GENCOS stating how much gas and energy were supplied and expected payments in return.
The value chain works in this format; the GenCos generate the power and send it to TCN who in turn distributes it among the DisCos for downstream distribution to both private and commercial users.
Non of these stakeholders in the value chain are paid until the DisCos collect monies from customers and remits to NBET who now distributes the amount declared by the DisCos in percentages amongst them.
HOW BEDC STEALS FROM THE MONEY:
BEDC since take over have always declared to have 750, 000 customers in their network which is Ondo, Edo, Ekiti and Delta states respectively.
This figure can easily be known to be the biggest lie told by a public utility company like the BEDC.
A street of about 30 houses can boast of having over a hundred customers due to buildings with more than a single occupant in a street.
With this lie, they collect from more customers and under declare amount collected just as they pocket the remaining.
This was what inform NERC in asking BEDC to carry out enumeration of customers recently.
As a matter of evidence available to us, the BEDC have at different times given out private bank account details for customers to pay into.
Two is that, BEDC has always be sounding like a broken records in their constant accusation of customers of bypass of meters. They do this often to paint the picture that, the reason they under remit is because majority of their customers bypass meters leading to the shortfall in remittance. It should be noted that, NERC has made provisions for such losses in what is termed Aggregate Technical and Commercial Loss Reduction (ATC & C).
From the foregoing, the BEDC has been shortchanging the value chain over the years making it practically impossible for TCN and GENCOS to break even. This has led to GENCOS shutting down operations and reducing productivity due to the inadequate revenue received to run their operations. TCN cannot improve their distribution network which has become obsolete and cannot wheel more than 7, 000 MW without system breakdown.
There are other areas BEDC have been stealing from the system over the years yet they scream of energy theft and non payment of their estimated bills by customers just in a bid to shortchange the value chain.
We will be giving more insights to these just as we are waiting for their exit in 60 days time.
Leftist Osazee Edigin
Public Relations Officer
Edo Civil Society Organisations
www.edocso.org
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