•Collaborates with American partner to train 35 Nigerian professionals
Dike Onwuamaeze
The Aba Power Limited (APL), Nigeria’s newest power distribution firm, is collaborating with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) of the United States to embark on house-to-house electricity consumers’ enumeration in nine out of the 17 local government areas (LGAs) in Abia State.
The enumeration exercise would commence today and would last for four months. The APL has been providing electricity to these local governments since February 2022.
The collaboration was disclosed yesterday by the Managing Director of the APL, Mr. Patrick Umeh, a former commissioner with the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
Umeh, who is also a former executive of the Los Angeles Water and Power Company in California in the United States, said the enumeration became necessary because “Aba Power is embarking on a major network expansion to enable it to provide not only 24-hour service from year to year to all consumers but also quality power to make manufacturers in Aba and environs become more competitive.”
According to him, the enumeration would help the company to determine transformers and other electricity distribution infrastructure which are already overloaded or may be overburdened soon.
The exercise would involve 35 Nigerians who were hired by the APL but trained by NRECA to work in the enumeration exercise.
The enumeration team would also include computer scientists, statisticians, geographers and related professionals that would be using the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to conduct the exercise.
Umeh said: “We are using the GPS to identify the location of each structure and the consumers there, and provide each a unique identification number which will be used to deal with any problem from each structure,”
He disclosed that the enumeration would put to an end the practice whereby some electricity consumers are exploited by their landlords and even co-tenants through non-provision of separate meters.
“These consumers pay electricity bills to the landlords and fellow tenants, as the case may be, but the latter pocketed the money, making the helpless paying-consumers suffer unfairly when they are cut off from power supply for nonpayment.
“We will end the exploitation by providing each consumer with a separate meter as we carry out the consumer survey,” he said.
The managing director of the APL said that it is unacceptable that some places within the company’s coverage are still without electricity.
He said: “This is unacceptable in the 21st century as Nigeria is in a hurry to develop rapidly. All these gaps have to be closed immediately.”
An Engineer with the APL, Mr. Jude Efidi, told journalists in Aba, yesterday, that following the massive and sustained improvements in power supply in recent months in the area serviced by Aba Power, local and foreign manufacturing firms, which for years depended solely on self-power generation on account of inefficient public electricity supply, “are fast turning to us because it is far cheaper to obtain power from us.”
These firms, according to Efidi, included the Nigerian Breweries and the Guinness Breweries that have for long been providing their own power because the poor and unpredictable supply from the national grid caused them to lose their sensitive and expensive equipment and machines.
He said: “The era of what economists call suppressed demand is coming to an end as far as power supply in the nine local governments in Abia State is concerned because of the dramatic improvements in our service delivery.
“The enumeration has become imperative to enable us to plan effectively not just for now but also for the future, as is the case in developed nations.
“To our chairman, Professor Bart Nnaji, a former Minister of Power and a world-class engineering professor, it is an article of faith we provide world-class service.”
