Many Nigerian electricity consumers were yesterday thrown into confusion following the decision of Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs) operating in the country to clandestinely increase electricity tariffs by about 100 percent.
It was reliably gathered that the increment was effected last week Tuesday; however, many Nigerians were not aware of it until yesterday morning when they visited the offices of their electricity providers to complain about their inability to load the token generated for energy purchased.
According to a consumer who purchased energy units of N5,000 last Tuesday, he was unable to load the token generated for him by an Electricity Distribution Company vendor. He said all attempts to load the token failed, with the ‘X AAAAA’ message always displaying on the monitor.
Feeling frustrated, he said he decided to visit the office of the Electricity Distribution company to lodge a complaint but met a huge crowd of over 500 customers already waiting to be attended to over the same complaint.
With a tally number given to him, he waited for over three hours before he could be attended to. The Customer Care officer who attended to him apologised profusely, blaming the hiccup on the reconfiguring of their tariffs’ template.
He said he was promptly issued three sets of tokens (20 numbers each), totaling 60. He was very happy when the successful sign popped up after he had entered all the 60 numbers. However, he was shocked to find out that only 100.8 units were allocated to him instead of the usual over 200 units.
After quickly racing back to the Electricity Company office; and after waiting for another one hour, he was attended to by another customer service agent who explained to him that his tariff has been increased by about 100%. “That was why you couldn’t load the first token generated for you because your tariff code had been reconfigured to accommodate the new rate”, the official explained.
Some of the complainants who spoke to newsmen also confirmed the sudden and unexpected hike in electricity tariff.
Findings revealed that the increment cuts across all the distribution units scattered across the country.
Efforts to reach the Electricity Distribution Head of Corporate Communications were not successful, while calls made to his line didn’t connect and he was unable to reply to a text message sent to him.
