Some officials of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria are bent on charging electricity consumers for prepaid meters, a POWER TALKBACK investigation has shown.

With well-planned strategies, they make it appear to the average customer that the process is official and approved by the management of the company.

Just like when paying for an authentic service rendered, they ask that such payments be made into certain PHCN bank accounts and even issue receipts.

But to the wary, the ploy is easily detected because usually, the receipts are wrongly tagged so that they don’t reflect that the customer had just been cheated.

The latest of such tricks by these category of PHCN officials is to ask new users of prepaid meters to pay N5,000 for the creation of a new account.

This is irrespective of whether they have any existing bill or not. It doesn’t also consider the fact that such a customer did not owe a dime before.

A customer, identified simply as Comfort, recently wrote to Saturday PUNCH about her experience at the Ojodu Business District office.

“I live in the Omole area of Lagos,” she wrote. “Last week, I went to the PHCN Alausa to recharge my PPM card for the first time after it was installed. But I was directed by the customer care unit to go and get a reconciliation form from PHCN Ojodu office, even when I told them that I didn’t owe any previous bill.

“All I needed was for the PHCN to separate my account from my landlord’s since I now have a new PPM. Unfortunately, I was asked to first pay N5000 before I could recharge my PPM card with N2000.

“I was given a machine printed receipt and two documents that look like bills: on one they wrote Rec. and on the other they wrote L/R.

“At the Ojodu office, I found out that many customers were being asked to pay N5,000 for sundry reasons. A PHCN official, who saw the papers I was given said that I needed not have paid at all. It was then I thought that I had been cheated. If the PPM is free, why the N5000 fee?”

However, the case raised by Comfort is just one amongst many cases of would-be PPM customers getting extorted by some PHCN officials.

Checks by this newspaper found that in most undertaking offices in Lagos, the public are still asked to pay N5,000 to apply for the PPM, which is free.

It’s noteworthy to state that the PPM only earned the tag ‘free’ because the cost of procuring it, among others, has been factored into the bills already being paid by all classes of electricity customers.

When contacted for her reaction on the N5000 allegation, a Manager in charge of customer care in the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company, Bukola Ojurongbe, said that a new PPM customer should not pay any fee.

She explained that the customer could only be asked to pay part of what he owed the PHCN at the point of getting a PPM.

The remaining amount, if any, will then be spread over agreed number of months, to ensure that he pays a part of the debt each time he had to vend.

“A new prepayment customer, who was not owing and not previously disconnected should not asked to pay any reconciliation fee,” Ojurongbe said.

“Separating such a person’s account should attract no payment. This case will be investigated, that I can assure you of. I only need to get proofs of the transaction that transpired between the customer and the business district.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has warned all distribution companies to desist for acts of extortion capable of frustrating the efforts of the industry regulators.

NERC had in the wake of the June tariff review directed that PPMs be given to customers for free. This has however not be realised yet as NERC has been accused of not rolling out PPMs to carry out that directive.

NERC has however kept mum on this. It claimed that the distribution companies had all that was required to commence the deployment of PPMs in line with customers’ expectations

Even in Police Station, bail is FREE!
This is Nigeria and nothing is Free. The blame should be on the regulatory body who gave a directive without having a process of monitoring its compliance.
Nigeria is a rogue country, many areas such as mine purchased our transformer, electric poles etc with our money which was supposed to be provided free by PHCN, now that Government has decided to privatise PHCN, those things automatically becomes that of the new owners. Isn't that a rip off itself?

take dat: Even in Police Station, bail is FREE!
This is Nigeria and nothing is Free. The blame should be on the regulatory body who gave a directive without having a process of monitoring its compliance.
Nigeria is a rogue country, many areas such as mine purchased our transformer, electric poles etc with our money which was supposed to be provided free by PHCN, now that Government has decided to privatise PHCN, those things automatically becomes that of the new owners. Isn't that a rip off itself?

hmmm thoughtful observation!