By Adedapo Adesanya
The use of illicit meters in Osun State has caused the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) to lose over N130 million in revenue every month.
The IBEDC Regional Manager for Osun, Mr Oluwatoyin Akinyosoye, condemned electricity consumers in the state for this practice at a stakeholders’ town hall meeting on Wednesday in Osogbo.
Mr Akinyosoye said that the town hall meeting was organised to draw the attention of the consuming public to those who engage in the sabotage of its operations.
According to him, in Osun, there are 15,000 illicit meters causing the company an average revenue loss of N130 million.
”To us as a company, this is a huge loss in our revenue because these illicit meters consume energy on our network, but the revenue is not coming to us.
“If we can curb the use of these illicit meters, then we can take the revenue back to the company, improve on our network and embark on other metering interventions to serve our customers,” he said.
The regional manager said that the unregistered meters were not supplied to consumers by the company, explaining that IBEDC had a different intervention on metering through which customers could obtain their meters.
He said customers could get metered through the meter self-provider, whereby customers pay and get metered, and the cost of the meter would be refunded to them over a period of time.
Mr Akinyosoye also said that prospective customers could benefit from the IBEDC rollout meter intervention, whereby meters were given to customers for free.
He said that the recently concluded national mass metering programme by the federal government was another avenue customers could get meters.
“As a company, we stopped this Non-Standard Transfer System meter in 2013.
“So, each of these meters that you have to use a card before you can load and that was installed between 2013 till now are illicit meter,” the official said.
Mr Akinyosoye advised electricity consumers who have such illicit meters to visit the IBEDC to find out how they could be replaced.
“But any customer that we discover using the illicit meter would have his or her supply disconnected, charged for loss of revenue, pay for penalty and of course face prosecution,” he said.
