Consumers decry poor power supply in Abuja, environs
Electricity consumers in Abuja and its environs are worried over what they have described as poor power supply since early this year. Daily Trust spoke with some residents of Abuja yesterday who decried the depleting hours of power supply they receive from the networks of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC). This is coming after […]
Electricity consumers in Abuja and its environs are worried over what they have described as poor power supply since early this year.
Daily Trust spoke with some residents of Abuja yesterday who decried the depleting hours of power supply they receive from the networks of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC).
This is coming after the 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos) made a hike of electricity tariff in January with some consumers saying they had over N5 increment in line with the DisCos approved Multi Year Tariff Order (MYTO) 2022.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) approved the MYTO 2022 and published it in May 2022, specifying adjustments to the various tariff classes from February to December 2022 and from January to June 2023.
A Gwarinpa resident, Aminu Bello, said the trend has been that power goes off in the morning and they get it later in the day. He said: “We are supposed to be on band B which is about 16 hour of power supply but the cumulative daily supply has been around 12 hours or less since January. We are not happy because we have been short-changed despite the new increment.”
Another resident at Wuse, Joshua Adamu, said he observed a drop in power supply for over a month too. “Yes, there is a drop in power supply and it is coming when we are made to pay more tariff,” Adamu said, responding to an enquiry.
At the Nyanya axis of Abuja, residents also confirmed a drop in power supply. And at the neighbouring Mararaba town in Nasarawa state, customers of AEDC are not happy over the power drop.
John Bulus, a resident of Ado area said his bill has jumped to N15,000 monthly on estimation but has gotten worse supply this year so far.
“Here in Mararaba, we are on Band E which has a minimum of five hour supply but there are days that you can’t even see the power supply at all,” noted Onyeche Okoh, a resident.
Daily Trust’s analysis of grid power generation in over two weeks shows that bulk power has hovered between slightly 4,000 megawatts (MW) and dropping to 3,000MW occasionally, meaning far less power is available for distribution.
Recall that in the first quarter of 2022, Nigerians suffered the same fate with multiple national grid system collapses as the Generation Companies (GenCos) turned off several turbines for lack of gas, low water for the hydros and for maintenance.
When contacted on the power supply situation around Abuja, the Chief Marketing Officer of AEDC, Mr Donald Etim, confirmed a drop in power load allocation to the DisCo in recent times.
“The truth is that there is a drop in the load allocation to us less than we used to have before. Our load allocation trend showed we get below what we should get from the national grid.”
AEDC ought to get nearly 600MW of electricity allocation daily which is about 11.05 per cent of the national grid power generation and distributes to Kogi, Abuja, Nasarawa and Niger states, however, its daily load allocation cards posted on the social media shows an average of 460MW for some times this year, and even dropped to 360MW early in January.