Whistle blowing on energy thieves

Recently, the minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, called on Nigerians to extend the whistle blowing policy of the federal government to the energy sector by exposing electricity consumers within their neighborhood, who consume power illegally. He said energy theft is unfair to about six million Nigerian who pay their bills to keep the lights on for the illegal consumers. He said energy theft needs to be brought under control while energy thieves need to be named and shamed.

Obviously, this call follows the successes recorded in the use of the policy to expose politically connected people or former government officials who allegedly corruptly enriched themselves while in public office. Recently, the Federal Ministry of Finance said that the sum of N375.8 million has been paid to 20 providers of information under the Whistleblower Policy. According to Salisu Dambatta, director of Information, the payment was related to the recovery of N11.6 billion. Dambatta said the payment was only for recovered assets that had been declared free of legal disputes or litigation by the Attorney-General of the Federation and taxes have been removed before final payments to beneficiaries.

However, application of the whistle-blower policy in the energy sector is little more nuanced and may not produce the same result as that on corruption. For one, many customers are dissatisfied with the quality of service of currently provided by the electricity companies. Worse still, most customers are aggrieved by the huge estimated bills they receive. This billing system, termed crazy billing, is being used by the Discos to generate far in excess of the revenue they would have generated from customers with pre-paid metres. A comparison of the estimated bills received by customers with customers with pre-paid metres show that those without metres pay as much as five times what those with metres pay.

This removes incentives for many customers to reveal to the authorities the identity of those who consume power illegally. A recent raid carried out in highbrow Lekki area of Lagos state showed that highly influential people were culpable in stealing power. Many of those involved in the act almost see it as a way of punishing the Discos whose services are woeful but who revel in extorting consumers. Unless the Discos improve on their services and unless the power situation improves and customers get value for what they pay, it may be difficult to get Nigerians to key into the whistle blowing policy in the power sector.

Another challenge presented in the application of the whistle-blower policy in the energy sector is what compensation system would be most effective. Whistle blowing in Nigeria is seeing a modicum of success because there is a huge incentive of almost 5 percent for any disclosure that yields to recovery of stolen assets. It is not clear how this will be applied in the power sector.

Nigerians’ willingness to self-generate power and play almost twice the cost of grid connected power indicates that many customers would readily pay a fair rate for uninterrupted power. Also, there are smart meters that can adequately calculate the exact power consumption. Instead of whipping up sentiments and setting Nigerians against one another, the focus of the ministry should be to provide prepaid meters to all consumers as is standard practice all over the world.