AKINWALE ABOLUWADE
The Chief Executive Officer, Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, Kingsley Achife, has assured energy consumers within its franchise area that the company would upscale its service delivery for the social and economic prospects of all.
Achife made the pledge while reeling out the company’s projection during a press conference held at the IBEDC head office, Ring Road, Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
Acknowledging the challenges being faced by the energy distribution company over the years, he said that efforts were being made since his assumption of office six months ago to turn around the fortune of the IBEDC. To ensure that the company’s policy is followed to the letter relying on the commitment of its workforce, the management said that staff welfare was reviewed upward across board by 25per cent to boost their morale.
Achife said, “Simply put, the idea is to turn around the company to serve our people better and convince the public that we deserve to be paid for the services we render so that we will be able to serve more. We have come with about four themes; we are looking at source and distribution. We are going to create commercial lines, we are going to provide premium services, we are going to look at our network, how we get energy and how we distribute it.
“As you know, there has been a big shortfall, gap in the demand and supply of energy in Nigeria. Lagos did put out something where they said that there is 45,000 megawatts demand for energy in their energy policy and 15,000 which is in Lagos. But, I can say that 15,000 which is in Lagos but you know that I can say that 15,000 megawatts they claim that is in Lagos, a lot of it is in our own franchise area. If you look Lagos and Ibadan corridor, the demands there in terms of factories, we are unable to serve them properly.
“Look at Ogun – Ota area, look at interchange area and Ikenne where the Chinese are coming up with their industry and then towards Ikorodu, there is really a huge demand and short fall. That is one of the reasons we looked at a sourcing and distribution as something we need to address seriously and we have been talking to a number of companies to see if we can buy extra power outside the grid to be able to serve these communities.”
Achife, who also urged the Federal Government to increase its hands of fellowship towards ensuring improved power supply to the citizens, stressed that “Another thing we are doing is to bring excellence in our services to our customers. That is to ensure that our underserved and unserved communities can be reduced. We have about 550 communities that are underserved or unserved.
“We are addressing it with franchising; we have been able to franchise about three of them now and more will follow. We also have those with mini grids; we are also going to address them by providing some other services which are part of the things we are doing to be able to deal with this issue. So, we hope that before the end of the year, we are going to bring down quite a number of these.
“We have about 500 transformers that are faulty in our network. We intend to provide about 300 transformers in the course of this year to relieve the suffering of existing customers who we can no longer serve because their transformers are faulty. We have workshop at Eleyele, Ibadan. We have brought out the first set of transformers that we have been able to repair there which we have sent to the communities. We hope that in the course of this year, the repair workshop should be able to do 100 to 200 transformers.
“We are expecting them to produce every week. That would allow us to provide some level of excellence in our services to our customers. We are also looking at how we serve our customers, for instance, if you want to connect your new homes how long does it take you? How do we do it seamlessly without giving you all the stories that people hear about.
“Over the period of six months, to a large extent, the bills we are getting from the market can speak for itself.”
He, however, noted that “Recently, people have been experiencing a lot of disruption in supplies around Ibadan because transmission is re-tooling some of their lines. So, from Eleyele to Jericho back to Eleyele, including Ibadan North s well as Akobo, a lot of people will be experiencing this till transmission finishes their work.”
The CEO said that IBEDC would inject about N14billion into improving service delivery.
