Discos debts To Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) now N500 billion
Discos transfer burdens to ordinary citizens

MINISTRIES, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) at Federal, State and Local Government levels; Armed Forces and Security Agencies, owe Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) billions of Naira.

However, unlike ordinary businesses or individual consumers that get disconnected from the power supply for failure to pay bills, they enjoy continuous access to power supply, despite huge electricity debts affecting the operations of DISCOs.

The failure of the DISCOs to recover these debts or cut off the defaulting MDAs and institutions from the power supply has persisted, despite reminders by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on the rights of the companies to disconnect MDAs that refuse to pay bills.

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Rather than pay up, the MDAs have employed a strategy of disputing the debts and calling for audits and reconciliation of bills over several years.

Consequently, the DISCOs owe other power sector stakeholders and have transferred the cost to ordinary citizens through a combination of estimated billing and other unfair practices.

How much do various MDAs owe electricity distributors?

As of July 2021, The ICIR found that Federal, State and Local Government MDAs owe DISCOs up to N202 billion. The MDAs debts were classified into verified and unverified debts.

According to the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), the Federal Government has verified N48 billion as MDAs’ debts, while N61 billion is yet to be confirmed. This does not include the estimated N93 billion owed by Armed Forces and Security Agencies in Nigeria.

For a comparative scale, this debt exceeds the total amount released by the Federal Government to the Ministry of Health in five years (2015-2019), which is almost N158 billion.

Records obtained by The ICIR from ANED show that the Nigerian Army owes an estimated sum of N48.9 billion naira in electricity charges. The Nigerian Navy owes N11 billion, the Nigerian Police Force owes almost N6.6 billion, and the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) owes N1.1 billion between 2015 to 2020.

Other MDAs include the Ministry of Interior with a debt of almost N3 billion, the Ministry of Education owing N2.4 billion, the Ministry of health owing over N855 million, the Ministry of Finance; N443 million and Ministry of Justice; N112 million.

MDAs in Nigeria have an annual budget for electricity usage under their recurrent expenditure, which is passed into law by the National Assembly.

Between 2015-2020, electricity charges for the Nigerian Navy were over N1.5 billion, N3.4 billion for the Army, N780 million for the Nigerian Police, while the NCoS got N614 million.

One thing must always worsen something. As long as the it's government agencies, they are free to do whatever they deemed fit. Even if they are taken to the court, they won't honour the verdict.

They will always cause the problems for the masses to bear the consequences. Yet they don't get punished for it.