September 1, 2021 Tariff hike: EKEDC denies alleged increase

Solomon Ezeme

Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) has denied allegation of a purported increase in electricity tariff by he Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to the 11 Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) effective from September, 1, 2021.

Engineer Adeoye Fadeyibi, Managing Director. Chief Executive Officer, EKEDC , disclosed this is a statement released to the media on Saturday. According to him the management of EKEDC would like to inform the general public to disregard all such reports not emanating from the management.

The statement said, “Our attention has been drawn to the news making the rounds in the media from unsubstantiated sources of a planned adjustment in electricity tariff.
“While we continue to review effective and regulated strategies to manage the impact of charges to macro-economic indices affecting end-user tariff, the general public will be duly informed in the event of any changes to the end-user tariff.

Engr. Adeoye however charged all customers under its network to disregard all communication that have not been issued by the EKEDC management or published on the its website.

Earlier in the weekend the media was awashed with a purported document obtained from some of the DisCos at the weekend, where it was alleged that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission(NERC) has instructed the DisCos to charge a service-based tariff in its letter titled “Tariff Increase Notification”.

The unsubstantiated document titled:”023/EKEDP/GMCLR/0025/2021, dated August, 25, 2021, instructing EkeDc to officially inform its customers on the decision of upward tariff adjustment effective from 1st September 2021.

That unconfirmed document instructed the energy distributor informed its customers that “the increase will be reflected on the energy bill for October 2021, which will represent energy consumption for September 2021.

Meanwhile, while efforts was made by EnergyDay News to validate the statement from NERC, all calls and text messages directed the Commission’s spokesman, Dr. Usman Arabi, did not get response.

Management of others DisCos have refused to give react the allegation as call put across to the official media officer were not honoured as at press time.