Yemisi Izuora
Eko Electricity Distribution Plc has indicated plans to review electricity tariffs to meet power supply within its network in the state, inspite of court order against tariff hike.
The Federal High Court in Lagos recently ordered the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission and electricity distribution companies in Nigeria to shelve their decision to hike tariff pending the determination of a case instituted by a Lagos lawyer against the hike.
But the Chief Executive Officer of the company, Mr Oladele Amoda, who dropped the hint at a stakeholders’ consultative forum in Lagos, explained that the adjustment became imperative so as to be more cost reflective’ on its operations.
He said :”The company is being run at lost since inception because our investors had invested lots of money into the system which has no cost reflective on the supply distribution chain to customers.
When you look the economic indices, there is high increase of dollars in terms of exchange rate, while other things had also gone up. Most of our equipment like transformers, cables, lines etc were been imported, the effect of rising in dollars had affected the cost the materials”.
He said the company has set aside about N52 billion for metering of its customers in the next five years, and that management plans to deploy about 50,000 meters before the end of the year.
According to him, over the next five years the company would have installed about 644,000 smart meters while about 250,000 new customers would have been conn
ected with meters.
He said that over N10 billion had been spent so far on network rehabilitation, reinforcement, improvement and assets upgrade, adding that the company received about 250 mega watts from national grid as against 700 megawatts required .
Amoda also said that about $1.1 billion is required over the period of ten years to boost effective power supply to its customers, while about $250 million will be required in the next five years for electricity expansions and rehabilitation of networks.
He said that the company will add about 1,000 megawatts to it distribution in the next two years from embedded generation while it plans to boost it by 1,200 megawatts by 2018.