The Nigerian Association of Electricity Consumers (NAEC), South East Zone, has dissociated the entire zone, including the five state governments in the area, from the reported refusal of some 14 communities in Obingwa Local Government Area of Abia State to pay electricity bills to Aba Power Limited on the ground that they donated transformers some years ago to a firm which was supplying power to the area until last February when the Aba ringed fence area was handed over to Geometric Power.
“We cannot sanction such an action which causes Aba Power, which is Nigeria’s newest electricity distribution company and the 12th in the country to lose N100 million every month despite Aba Power going out of its way to provide the communities with at least 20 hours of electricity daily because of the manufacturing companies located in their midst”, the NAEC Secretary General, Mr Joseph Onyekachi”, declared. “The regrettable action of a few individuals in this lone local government area does not by any means represent the thinking and behavior of the individuals, groups, associations, communities, businesses and governments in Abia State, let alone the South East.
“Igbo people have over the decades been known to have achieved enormous progress in different areas like education, electricity provision, water development and road construction, but we have never failed to meet our civic and contractual obligations”.
Onyekachi recalled that even in the days when public electricity elsewhere was a federal monopoly, individuals and communities as well as businesses purchased their own transformers and other electricity distribution infrastructure and donated to the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) and later the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).