By Abraham Ogbodo
Dear Governor Sheriff,
I have chosen to write instead of seeking to see you to deliver my message. The message is a bit urgent. It cannot wait for the protocols of your office. Don’t be offended by the way I have addressed you. As you know, in Warri, especially in our side of it, we don’t do too much protocol. It is either a senior man is Ose (father) or Big Bros. And it is either a senior woman is Malee (mother) or Big Sis. Against me, you are neither Ose nor Big Bros. But you are my Governor and nothing will take away anything from that. It remains constant. Back in Osubi, you are my neighbour. We were flowing steady before you left for Asaba, first for legislative duties before the beautiful migration to your current executive station. We still dey flow anyhow.
Once, Ose Prof. Sam Oyovbaire had to refer my matter to you to handle. The boys in Okuokoko didn’t know me too well because I was still sojourning in Lagos. They were crossing red lines regarding the naming of Obomeyoma Close by Okpe Local Government. You had decisively stepped in to fix the matter. This was almost a decade ago. I still recollect your exact line when you called to say the boys had been briefed to dey their dey and strictly maintain their lane. “Bros, you would have called me first, instead of escalating this kind of small matter to Prof.’’
It is like I am talking as if we have not crossed more paths since that engagement. Yes, we have. And the most significant and recent one is the operation of an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Ewu to care for the displaced indigenes of Okuama. Although that one is still an unfinished business which you must finish, it is not why I am writing you this letter.
In short, let me go straight to the point. I am writing to thank you for signing the Delta State Electricity Bill into law last week. I don’t use to drink beer like that. I mean, I am not a beer drinker in the sense of beer drinking men in the bar. But I had sent for two bottles at once when the news hit me. I added a plate of fresh fish pepper soup to make it a complete package. The bill had been with you for some months and I was beginning to feel one kind. To me, it was the intending state law of the century and I couldn’t understand why the signing delayed till last week. But as they say, things may endure to either get better or get worse. I thank you for finally signing the bill into law.
You see, Your Excellency, you may not understand why I am talking like this. I don’t even know how to tell you about my experience with public electricity in Ughelli and even Nigeria as a whole because it wasn’t any better in Lagos where I came from. My story, therefore, is the story of every Nigerian. I am sure your own story may not be too different in spite of the massive insulations offered by official paraphernalia. We are all victims of some set-ups called Electricity Distribution Companies and DISCOS for short. They are truly discotheque dancers who do their unconventional dancing at our expensive. But I will limit it to my experience with the one called Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC).
As you already know, the Federal Government had woken up some time in 2005 with this fantasy that supply of public electricity would be better if what used to be NEPA or PHCN was dismantled into pieces. They called it privatisation and unbundling of the power sector and the hitherto Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) was accordingly unbundled into 18 successor companies including 11 electricity distribution companies of which BEDC is one. It was the new private company to distribute public electricity in the four states of Delta, Edo, Ondo and Ekiti. That was how we all became yoked with it.
Your Excellency, I wasn’t part of the unbundling and so, I wouldn’t know the actual terms upon which the unviable bundle, in the first place, became unbundled into even more unviable pieces of companies. I have only been impacted negatively by the operations of the BEDC. I stand at the downstream end and from my stand point, I can say without fear of being contradicted, that BEDC exists only to guide us, and for an exorbitant fee called electricity bill, on how to generate and distribute our own electricity. Nothing more.
Let me be more specific. Late last year, the distribution transformer in my area of town got bad. The fault was promptly reported at the BEDC office in Ughelli. Almost immediately, they generated a power consumption and payment analysis that returned a debt of N80 million, by way of unsettled bills, against us and insisted that until the debt was cleared, the fault would not be rectified. I was like, how? Why the ambushing? Why hadn’t there been a determined drive on the part of BEDC, before the fault happened, to recover its money? And where are the upscale households and companies in a lay-out of community folks living in their bungalows as landlords and tenants to consume this much power?
It is a pattern Your Excellency. The BEDC and other Discos understand the helplessness of Nigerians. They know for sure that we are exposed not to the so-called market forces in a competitive economy, but a blood-sucking cabal of rent seekers that has everything, including government, going for it. They reap where they do not sow and nothing happens to them.
We could not sustain any action against the BEDC. I had reached out to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in Abuja. It listened but that was like going to the court in Nigeria where even what is obvious, would be required to be proved beyond reasonable and unreasonable doubts. Also, all straight-forward processes would be required to be proved beyond all technical limitations to avoid being ambushed by technicalities. Whatever NERC would do, and it has not been too known for taking hard decisions on DISCOS in support of consumers, would not assuage the pressing issue.
To cut the long story short, Your Excellency, residents rallied and provided a new 500kva transformer. We paid sundry fees that were not receipted, and with I beg and the patience of a vulture, to get BEDC technicians to install the new transformer for us. We have also repaired the faulty transfer and working day and night to install same to separate the area into two transformer feeders.
This is still hanging because we have not been able to provide the funding, in spite of our best efforts, for the contractor to conclude the process. Outside the transformer which was generously donated by one us, residents have so far raised about N11 million to achieve all the ancillary services and incidentals. And wait for this Your Excellency. Could you believe that to move forward with BEDC, we were whitemailed (some African scholars are saying we should not be using blackmail again in both verbal and written communication) into signing off these massive private investments as donations from us to BEDC?
I don’t know who these scholars are, but they seem to believe that, there is a correlation between our being called black and all the dark, dark things, happening to us in this part of the world. It has been very frustrating sir in our area in Ughelli. To God who made me, If we had the guns, guts and the clout like those soldiers under Ikeja Disco, we would have stormed the Ughelli or Warri offices of the BEDC to beat sense into some of the staff. The BEDC is treating us anyhow as it likes. The faulty transformer and the entire distribution infrastructure, including aluminium conductors and concrete poles, that bring electricity into the area, were procured by us years ago. BEDC has done practically nothing for us outside collection of bills. It does not deserve its name.
Yet, bad as it sounds, our situation is better. Are you surprised sir? Agbarha-Otor, a whole kingdom with about 30 satellite settlements and a functional university, has not had public electricity for almost a decade now. You are aware of this Your Excellency, and in fact, trying hard to work out a solution. Meanwhile, our wonderful John Player Disco dancer is patiently waiting in the background for all problems to be resolved and then resume its money collection ritual by way of baseless electricity bills to consumers. Is this fair to all parties, Your Excellency?
I guess, you now understand why I am particularly interested in the state electricity law you have just signed. You do not have any way of knowing how relieved some of us are. Sir, I beg of you, don’t ever mix this beautiful endeavour with politics. Deploy the same pragmatism with which you have been handling the urban renewal scheme in Warri and elsewhere in the State. It shouldn’t be an open call to eat free ukodo . It requires utmost sincerity of purpose. The liberalisation of power generation, transmission and distribution is one big achievement that can be recorded for President Mohammadu Buhari. Just before he returned to Daura from Aso Rock, Buhari had okayed a law to terminate the grid hegemony in Nigeria. What you have done with the State Electricity Law is to key into the Electricity Act and free Deltans from the albatross called the national grid system.
This is also saying that law is not definite performance. The real sense in all of this is in operationalising the law. Therefore, the expectation in the weeks and months ahead is for the proper regulatory and bureaucratic frameworks that will sound the whistle for effective investors to step in, to be created.
Your Excellency, I don’t want this signing of this critical bill to end at the level of optics. The sweetness of this electricity law will not have Part Two like Nollywood movies, if you do a little more to move it from law to service. That is, to take it beyond mere aspiration and a declaration to a concrete discription. It will not take much to get to destination. Gas is everywhere in the state and creating ebbed power clusters to speak to the issues is more of a question of will than capacity and favourable conditions.
With steady electricity, the private sector in Delta State will kick into life and its options shall become visible to all. Worrying to fix up every jobless youth in the state, that professes some measure of partisanship, into the governmental structure as Special Assistant, would become a thing of the past. There can never be a better demonstration of street credibility.
Thanks and God bless you sir.
Yours sincerely,
Bros AB.
