A retired electrical engineer with the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigerian (PHCN), Abraham Adebayo Ewetumo, has said the standardisation of all technical projects, jobs and maintenance activities as well as the strict enforcement and compliance to international best practices are key to substantially reducing and preventing humungous financial losses by distribution companies in Nigeria.
He also said the equipment introduced into the network should meet specified ISO and NSO standards. The retired training manager in an interview with New Telegraph over the weekend, also advised that direct connections must be banned in all power utilities and that improving the data collection of energy usage, machine performance, and energy production parameters be maximised to reduce billing errors.
The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) factsheet on the performance of electricity distribution com – panies in June had shown that electricity distribution companies nationwide lost N25.71 billion in revenues due to inefficiency in collection in June 2024.
According to the report, the total billing by DisCos in the month stood at N176.57 billion of which N150.86 billion was collected which represented a revenue collection shortfall or bill collection inefficiency of 14.56 per cent.
It also said that tye bill collection efficiency by DisCos within the period under-review represented a 12.80 percentage points improvement compared to the performance in the previous month of May 2024.
Giving specifics, it stated that Yola DisCo had the lowest revenue collection efficiency among DisCos for June, at 60.81 per cent, followed by Jos DisCos, 62.03 per cent and Kaduna DisCos, 66.46 per cent.
It said: “In terms of revenue, Yola DisCo collected N1.87 billion, while Jos and Kaduna DisCos collected N4.96 billion and N5.01 billion, respectively. “The total, these three DisCos billed customers N18.61 billion and collected 11.84 billion resulting in a cumulative loss of N6.77 billion in revenues.
“Despite recording a billing collection efficiency of 72 per cent, Ibadan DisCo recorded the single largest loss in revenue collection in the month losing N5.8 billion in revenue for the month out of N20.82 billion billed to customers.”
According to Ewetumo, there is also the need for a sound maintenance culture to be imbibed by all, from the top to the bottom in power utility, adding that a predictive time/reliability based maintenance management strategy/methodology be employed and religiously followed.
He also advised that breakdown maintenance must be avoided and reduced to the barest minimum and that technical jobs must not be compromised on any flimsy grounds by management, general staff or contractors.
He opined that consumer enumeration must be continuous and that there should be mandatory allocation of electricity meters( either postpaid/pre-paid) to each consumer unit before physical connection to the network.
He added that there should be periodic auditing of the data to spot energy theft, energy loss, and to identify opportunities to correct off-peak energy production.
He advocated for random transfers, posting and re-posting of revenue officers; strict discipline on all compromised revenue staff and encouragement of consumers to embrace and patronise official channels of payments.