Despite huge investment by the state government towards boosting electricity supply to every nock crannies of Nasarawa state, an agency statutorily charged with the responsibility of monitoring the chain of electricity supply to Nasarawa state, otherwise known as the Nasarawa Electricity Power Agency (NaEPA), has failed woafully to carry out this mandate as power supply in some parts of Lafia, the state capital, still experiencing one form of load shedding of electricity or the other in the last one year. While some part of the city are grabbling with exorbitant billing, despite the fact that, of recent there were no any increase in the electricity charges. For example non- pre-paid meter customers on feeder one who enjoys 20 hours of electricity hetherto paid N20, 000, but all of a sudden it jumbed over N40,000 without corresponding increase in number of hours. Nasarawa Eye gathered that the act establishing NaEPA gazetted under Nasarawa state legal notice number 6 of 2018 states, among other things, that “the  agency should liase with the federal government on power, the Nigerian electricity regulations commission, and any other relevant agencies for the implementation of national guidelines, policies, and resolutions and report an update on the situations and state of distribution of electricity and usage and coverage in the state to the NERC monitoring units on a regular basis” NaEPA is also mandated “to monitor the activities of electricity generation, distribution, and sales companies in the state to ensure efficiency and quality of service delivery to the citizens”. However, NaEPA has not pursue these core mandates since the establishment of the agency some 5 years ago. Nasarawa Eye further learned that since the commencement of NaEPA activities, there has been no update on the situation of electricity in Lafia or in Nasarawa State as a whole by the agency to NERC as required by law. Similarly, there was no monitoring of the activities of AEDC by NaEPA in the state. Nasarawa Eye findings indicate that the failure of NaEPA to carry out these functions made the Discos, otherwise known as AEDC, exploitative, forcing some Lafia residents to drag Disco to court over some glaring anomalies.
We at Nasarawa Eye believe that it was the lack of these oversight functions of NaEPA that made AEDC become not only exploitative but very arrogant in their approach to customers. Similarly, arbitrary billing of customers, which has now become a norm by AEDC, especially for customers who are without prepaid meters, was done in outright violation of NERC stipulations. And all this is happening before the naked eyes of the very agency the state government set up primarily to protect the people of the state against the excesses of discos doing business in the state. We therefore call on the state government to commence, with immediate effect, a thorough investigation into these seeming lapses on the part of NaEPA, which have caused untold suffering and hardship as well as inconveniences for the people of Nasarawa State.