Despite huge investment by the state government towards boosting electricity supply to every nook and cranny of Nasarawa state, an agency statutorily charged with the responsibility of monitoring the chain of electricity supply to Nasarawa state, known as the Nasarawa Electricity Power Agency (NaEPA), has failed woofully to carry out this mandate as power supply in some parts of Lafia, the state capital, has been characterised by one form of load shedding of electricity or the other in the last one year; while some parts of the city are grappling with exorbitant billing, despite the fact that, of recent there were no any increase in the electricity tariffs. For example non- prepaid meter customers on Feeder One who enjoy 20 hours of electricity, hitherto, paid N20, 000, but all of a sudden it jumbed over to N40,000 without corresponding increase in number of electricity hours supplied. Nasarawa Eye findings show 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 pursued these core mandates since it’s establishment some five years ago. Nasarawa Eye further learnt 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 Disco in charge of Nasarawa state, that is the Abuja Electricity, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), to be exploitative, forcing some Lafia residents to drag AEDC to court over some glaring anomalies.
We in 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 its approach to customers. 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 very eyes of the very agency the state government set up primarily to protect the people of the state against the excesses of discos like AEDC 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.