₦airaland Forum

cuteboy2:
I don't use all those apps. I don't watch Netflix or stream anything, yet my Airtel data and MTN evaporates like methylated spirit in hot sun.

gabbytabby:
The same reason Hilary Clinton and Mrs Jonathan and Igbo have problems with being voted is that no politician can afford to alienate any section of the electorate since have the job of looking after their interest if the lead them.

Whether they are almajiri, elites, educated or illiterate you have to let everyone know that you will protect their interest wherever they are now and show them how you intend to take them to a better place and not continue to insult people that will never work but the igbos keep showing arrogance. Think the own, developed everywhere and they are the best thing since slice bread.

Unfortunately the igbos are too proud and greedy that this makes them incapable of honest introspection.

selfemployed:
I'm suspecting fowl play.
Who else has noticed that MTN Data no longer lasts these days?

helinues:
We go dare you people after the inauguration to repeat this same lines.
Where there is no law, there is no sin. Where there is no sin, there is no law.

MXrep:
Barth Nnaji should borrow and settle Emeka Offor, he will recover everything in no distant time.
Modified: Emeka Offor has been settled. TCN should calm down. Aba Power is new and started collecting bills recently, they will settle all old debt gradually.

LadyExcellency:
TCN has no business with the payment of electricity in ABA.

Enugu Electricity Distribution Commission is the company that has a contract with TCN and not Cities and States.

After a contentious nine years battle that lasted until February 2022 to reclaim its operating licence, the Geometric Power is in for another round of intrigues that could stifle its operations following an order from the Transition Company of Nigeria (TCN) that disconnected its subsidiary, the Aba Power Limited, from the national grid yesterday over an
alleged controversial N869.21 million debt.

The disconnection has also plunged the industrial and commercial city of Aba and its environs in the South-east of the country into darkness, which would imperil hospital services and other essential services that would be disrupted severely, to say nothing about manufacturing companies.

It should be recalled that the Aba Ring-fence was thrown into the darkness between March 15 and 18, 2023, over payments to federal government agencies.
Aba Power became Nigeria’s 12th and newest electricity distribution company on February 16, 2022, when it paid $26 million to the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and Interstate Electrics to acquire the Aba Ring-fenced Area comprising nine out of the 17 local government areas in Abia State, though it could not take full control of the area
until six months later when it was allowed to collect revenue from customers.

The management of Aba Power, yesterday, in a press release titled ‘TCN Plunges Abia into Indefinite Blackout’, said that the TCN, the country’s sole transmission firm, wrote a
letter to it on April 19, 2023, with reference number TCN-MO-003-APL-049-VOL2-202, directing it to pay N869,210,059.58 within 30 working days, but on the same day the same
TCN wrote a letter, with reference number TCN-MO-003-APL049-VOL-202, to the Market Operator (MO) instructing it to disconnect Aba Power from the national grid from April 21,
2023.

Reacting to the disconnection, the Managing Director of Aba Power Limited, Mr. Patrick Umeh, who used to be a commissioner with the National Electricity Regulatory
Commission (NERC), denied that his company has been nonchalant towards the payment of its fees to government agencies, including the TCN.
Umeh said in the press release that Aba Power was able to pay a total of N550 million to the MO and the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) that sells electricity to it
“despite the huge difficulties that confronted Nigerians between January and April, 2023 as a result of petrol scarcity and the Naira redesign which, in turn, affected our customers’
ability to meet their obligations to us during this period.”

He said: “We were able to pay N50 million to the MO at the end of March. We also paid last month N500 million to the Niger Delta Power Holding Company that sells electricity
to us.”
Umeh narrated further that for six months the company bore the brunt of paying for electricity and staff salaries alone without collecting revenues from its consumers and has not
received compensation to this day.

He said: “Our monthly obligation to the NDPHC came to almost N800 million when we raised power supply to the Ringfence from 25 megawatts to 80 megawatts.”
He also pleaded that the firm should be given some time to sort out its debt to the TCN and the MO in consideration of the tremendous economic challenges in the country.

“Very soon, we will commission the Geometric Power Plant in Aba, from where we will get our own electricity and provide our customers constant, quality and affordable
electricity,” he enthused.

Reacting to the unfolding intrigue, a former executive director of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) Mr. Ben Caven, an engineer who was reputed to be the only person to
have headed the transmission, generation and engineering divisions in the defunct power parastatal, smelt rat in the contradiction in the TCN’s letters, which he described as
strange.
Caven said in the press release that “it is strange how the two letters emanating from the same source could contradict each other.

“I want to assume that there is no sinister motive, but a situation where a letter was written on April 19, delivered the next day to an electricity distribution company and then cut
off power supplies to the distribution company within a couple of hours the same day over a debt of a whopping N896 million is unprecedented.

“I am distressed by the fact that the action took effect on a public holiday, which began a long weekend.
“The persons who gave the directive could not respect the sensibilities of Muslims celebrating the Eid-el-Fitr feast, after 30 days of fasting.”

Speaking in the same vein, an Energy Consultant in Lagos, Mr. Cliff Eneh, who was a senior engineer with the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), also described the
directive to disconnect Aba Power from the national grid as totally unfair.
Eneh, who is also a senior engineer with the Texas Light and Power in the United States, said that the punitive measure against the Aba Power “is absolutely unfair because the
authorities know that the new distribution company has spent millions of Dollars to bring the dilapidated distribution infrastructure in the Aba Ring-fence to world-class.”
These investments, according to him, has bequeathed Aba, the capital of Nigeria’s indigenous technology, with new 1,500 kilometres of overhead wires, four brand new
substations, and three refurbished ones.
He also suspected that the Aba Power is being singled out for malicious regulatory punitive measures as the country’s other 11 electricity distribution companies have not been
switched off from the national grid despite their alleged repeated failures to meet their obligations to the TCN and the MO since they were established in November 2013.

Eneh alleged in the press release that “it is doubtful that the distribution companies in Yola and Jos, for instance, pay beyond 15 per cent of what they should, but they haven’t
been cut off because of the grave security implications.
“The new action by both the TCN and the MO cutting off supplies to the area appears selective.”
He alleged that the federal government has been subsidising the 11 old distribution companies enormously since their privatisation, pointing out that the government paid a
subsidy of N120 billion in 2022 alone.
The 11 DISCOs, he further alleged, were expected to pay the MO N70 billion in the first quarter of last year, but paid only N35.2 billion.
“Still, no one cut them off from the national grid, nor were there threats to do so.
“It is difficult to fathom the ongoing unbearable pressure on Aba Power, which has never received a kobo subsidy.
“Disconnecting Aba Power will make matters worse for everyone, including the TCN and the MO that cannot earn any money anymore from most of Abia State,” Eneh said.
However, THISDAY’s efforts to get the views of the TCN before going to the press were abortive. The Public Affairs Manager of TCN, Ms. Ndidi Mbah, could not answer her calls
or respond to sms and WhatsApp messages that were sent to her. Similarly, calls to the cellphone of the Managing Director of TCN, Mr. Sule Ahmed AbdulAziz, did not go through
and he has not responded to a questionnaire to his WhatsApp.

lhordspy:
Government schemes you say?

I am sorry to disappoint both you and Op. There is no tangible government scheme anywhere to relieve the masses of the impending subsidy effect.

Buhar!'s government is the worst i have seen anywhere in the world. The corruption masquerading as clueless-ness and the ease at which they seems confident operating in it; is mindbogglingly and should be taught in schools as a separate course.

quadraheem:
With the ongoing civil war happening in Sudan, we hope we can all see how it has taken a lot of lives and destruction of properties.
Only God knows when and how this is going to end and the gains that will ever come out of it, if any.
This is another lesson for millennials in Nigeria and all other African countries to always thread softly, take things gently and follow due process in achieving their goals rather than heating up the polity and forcefully forcing their ideologies on others.
We can all see how a lot of international communities are evacuating their citizens from the civil war ravaged country, despite the fact that some of these countries always play parts in turning the citizens against their governments.
Nigerians should not let evil people mislead them into situations like this.

Toosure70:
And nobody go question this one where he get private jet now o.