EKEDC urges Lagos, Ogun governments to curb power sector criminality

Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), yesterday, said it had lost over N4 billion to vandalism of its assets and electrical installations in the last six months.

It, therefore, urged Lagos and Ogun governments to assist in curbing the spate within its franchise.

Managing Director, EKEDC, Dr. Tinuade Sanda, who stated this in Lagos, also urged security agencies, media and the public to fight against vandalism and put an end to the incessant acts of criminality.

She said the acts had contributed to the prolonged outages in its network, leading to the disruption of many businesses and the loss of lives.

Sanda said the menace had made it difficult for the Disco to provide adequate electricity to its customers, whilst also posing a serious threat to its distribution infrastructure, especially the electricity cables.

“We have witnessed 18 incidents and from our own estimate, we have lost about N3 billion worth of underground armoured cables that are being stolen and resold in the black market.

“In terms of revenue losses due to prolonged outages, we also estimate an additional loss of N1 billion, which means we have lost about N4 billion to these activities of vandals,” she said.

She, however, reiterated that the electricity distribution company had not given any mandate to any company to carry out any form of excavation on any electrical or cable installations within its network.

According to her, EKEDC is engaging the Ministry of Power, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) over the claim by a company (names withheld) that it had a contract to decommission underground cables within its network.

Sanda, therefore, appealed to the public to report any person or group of individuals posing as members of staff of Eko Disco to the security agencies or contact the company through its various whistleblower channels.

She noted that the vandalism situation was unfortunate, considering the challenges being faced in electricity supply in Nigeria owing to shortage of gas supply, drop in power generation and the collapse of the national grid.

“These challenges have adversely affected the supply of power to our customers.

“However, I would like to reiterate to our esteemed customers that we are actively engaging the other stakeholders in the industry to provide solutions to these problems,” Sanda said.