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From Priscilla Ediare Ado-Ekiti
Ekiti State Commissioner for Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Prof. Bolaji Aluko, has commended the governor of the state, Mr Biodun Oyebanji, for his efforts at addressing issues of electricity in the state.
This was as he appealed to the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) to ensure steady supply of power to Aiyekire, Gbonyin and Ekiti East Local Government Areas of the state, which have been in darkness for many years.
The Commissioner made the remarks at a meeting with top officials of BEDC, traditional rulers, Senior Special Assistant(SSA) to the Governor on Community Communications, Mrs Mary Oso-Omotoso and other relevant stakeholders for the rehabilitation and connection of Aiyekire, Gbonyin and Ekiti East Local Government Areas to national grid, held at the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities(MIPU), in Ado-Ekiti, capital of the state.
At the meeting, they made some resolutions on how to address the challenges of inadequate power supply in the communities.
In his address, Prof. Aluko asserted that electricity is important to modern living, but elsewhere in the world, it is considered routine, but the scenario is a different ball game in Nigeria where electricity supply is difficult. Saying that, ” if it is difficult in Nigeria, we don’t want it to be difficult in Ekiti”.
He added, “Our approach in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Utilities is to address the problem headlong. Nigeria has its own 5000 megawatts for two hundred and twenty million people. In Ekiti, I don’t think we have more than eleven, ten, eight megawatts for three million people. If we don’t know the problem we face, then we don’t know the effort we must put to address that problem. And we have been on this case with either JKF 1, JKF 2 and continuity with BAO 1. We have let the government know what we face and steadily and steadily we have been trying to address those problems in different ways”.
The former Vice Chancellor, Federal University, Otuoke, Bayelsa State, said based on amendment, the constitution has made it possible for States to generate, transmit and distribute electricity.
Giving the stakeholders an assurance that with time, the challenges would be resolved, he believed that literally there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“The challenge is not that the State doesn’t know that money should be spent on electricity, but the question is, if the state spends money, how will it recover it? But we know that if we invest the money, there is a way we can be recovering some of the money”.
He explained that the State has been more keen and that governor Oyebanji’s government has spent almost a billion naira already on the transmission line.
According to him, “almost the same amount of money was spent from Ado to Ilasa, through Ode to Imesi. And Ado, through Ilawe to Ikogosi and so on. We conduct light through poles, transformers and so on. This is to ensure his one year promise to the Aiyekire axis, and to the ikogosi axis, that there will be electricity in these places.
“He has also promised electricity to the Ekiti agric processing zones, some of which get their electricity from Omuaran in Kwara State. Some money is being allocated to that”.
He said that the state government is committed to ensuring that there is electricity everywhere that is necessary in the State, urging the cooperation of every citizen. The State government, he reiterated has spent a lot on Ado, Aiyekire and Ekiti East axes with eighty kilometres of light and another seventy for those axes, describing it as a lot of expenditure.
The Commissioner stressed that electricity must be reliable, available, accessible, and measurable. He posited that metering is as important as other issues.
“There must be a way to ensure that what electricity consumers pay is commensurate with power supplied. Who pays at the end of the day, pays for the entire value chain. That’s the problem of electricity”.
In her remarks, the Acting Regional Head (BEDC), Ekiti State, Mrs Moyosola Akin-Afuye, appreciated the efforts put in place by the state governor, for what she described as the execution of noble projects in the communities, but decried the poor payment pattern of some of the communities in the past which she attributed to some hiccups.
Mrs Akin-Afuye said the company was ready to energize the communities, urging the communities to also play their own part. “Once we energize, they will play their own part in a pecuniary value and we are also ready to meter out transformers. But kabiyesis we cannot promise that we are going to meter everybody because the exchange rate of everything is going up everyday”.
“The company is ready to commence metering in addition to what we have on ground, but just like the Permanent Secretary has said, whatever you have now, let’s start with it. So once we meter the transformers, we check the reading and use that one to commence billing, but as soon as we do that we will want it reciprocated to in payment”
She noted that though the company is aware that all the communities have outstanding debts, they will work on this during the reconciliation and see from where to take off.
Some of the resolutions include:
– Commendation for the State governor, Biodun Oyebanji for procurement of 132 kVA
– BEDC to first supply bulk meters to the areas.
– Communities and BEDC to cooperate in restoring electricity to those axes.
– Communities to establish transformer committees to check consumption of electricity.
– Inadequate prepaid meters challenge to powering towns and villages.
– Backlog of debts strongly considered for possibility of reverting all the bad bills.
