When a people continue to resort to self-help to get heard, they extend the possibilities of anarchy. When a public institution is as much a source of irritation as PHCN is, then it should be overhauled. The reluctance to overhaul PHCN, the foot-dragging over its privatisation may prove rather costly in the long run. The Fed Up With PHCN Vanguard wants us to wear "all black attire". It won't be too long before angry customers begin to kidnap PHCN officials, and demand ransom like the boys in the Delta creeks. After all, that is one method of communication that seems to work in this country." />
12 Mar 2006 |
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 Fellow Nigerians: This is to inform you of a planned protest against the services of Power Holding Company of Nigeria (alias NEPA) billed for 15 March 2006. The plan is for us all to come out in ALL BLACK ATTIRE on WEDNESDAY 15 MARCH 2006 to express our dissatisfaction with the services of PHCN and the rude and arbitrary attitude of their staff. We are to go about our duties on that day but WEAR ALL BLACK ATTIRE. Nigerians are dying from exhaust fumes of generators; we are all becoming nervous wrecks from lack of good sleep at night due to the cacophony of noise from generators in all our neighbourhoods. We have had enough and we demand that the authorities do something immediate about this. Even if you live in the few privileged neighbourhoods where you can afford sound proof generators please identify with the suffering millions of Nigerians who cannot afford a generator and yet have to put up in their hot and humid rooms/shacks and lie awake all night because of the noise of generators in their neighbourhoods. We cannot even begin to quantify the economic loss that is brought about by PHCN's non performance. The extra cost of fuelling generators, employees who have to go to work after a restless and noisy night and cannot perform optimally, buildings and equipment which have been burnt or destroyed by power fluctuations... The Managing Director of PHCN should resign as he has shown total incapability to manage the affairs of the company for productivity. Wednesday 15 March is tagged BLACK DAY to bemoan PHCN (NEPA). It is only the first in a planned series of protests against the dismal service (or lack of it) that we get from PHCN and their extortionist habit of giving fixed bills every month whether they supply light or not. PHCN revenue must be commensurate with services rendered to the people. WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!!!!!!!. Please forward this mail to all your friends in Nigeria. Signed Fed up with PHCN vanguard NB: If you have had any frustrating interaction with PHCN officials; demands for bribes and request for contributions to buy transformers ... you could forward the information and names of the concerned officials to fedupwithphcn@yahoo.co.uk we shall circulate it and endeavour to send it to PHCN head office and copy EFCC. What you have just read in italics is the full text of the anti-PHCN (NEPA) material that is currently making the rounds on the internet. It speaks for itself. It is the advance notice of a proposed people action against a non-performing public institution, a form of consumers' revolt. Two and a half years ago, Nigerians witnessed a similar situation when consumers of GSM services decided to organise themselves into protest groups to force GSM service providers to reduce high phone tariffs. The GSM companies tried to bluff their way through the protests. In due course, however, changes in the GSM industry could be traced to the determination of consumers and their insistence on change. The Nigerian Communications Commission set up a Consumers parliament. Per second billing was introduced. GSM service providers began to pay more attention to their customers. They introduced a number of people-friendly incentives. They have since reduced call rates. The Fed Up with PHCN Vanguard, which is now asking us to wear all black attire on March 15, may have been inspired by this. What may well be important is the symbolism of the initiative. Black suggests mourning, sorrow, loss, anguish. PHCN or NEPA as it is better known has brought so much sorrow and anguish to Nigerians, be they ordinary families that are deprived of regular power supply, or companies which have to make special arrangements for power supply, the cost of which is passed on to hapless consumers. Asking Nigerians to wear black and mourn PHCN is also another way of saying that the institution is dead or that the people are better off without it in its present shape. The Fed Up With PHCN Vanguard wants Joseph Makoju, the PHCN Managing Director to resign. Liyel Imoke, the Minister of Power and Steel, should also resign. He is the chief undertaker and he seems to be happy playing that role. Virtually every parastatal under his control as Minister is moribund. The case of PHCN illustrates the futility of government's involvement in business. The institution's name was changed from NEPA to PHCN, but its managers are like the police, they run a thoroughly inefficient company; their staff treat the public shabbily. After the police, PHCN is the next most criticised and hated public institution in Nigeria. The Federal Government once announced that NEPA had been "unbundled" into 18 companies in order to ensure efficiency. The effect of that "unbundling" has not been seen. PCHN is still a big national elephant with wooden feet. There have been talks about privatisation as well, but this is strongly opposed by the National Union of Electricity Employees, which insists that PHCN cannot be sold unless certain labour issues are resolved. NEPA/PHCN owes its pensioners over N10 billion. A Power Reform Act was introduced in 2004, but to date it contains only those projects that may be handled during the "third term"! There are problems with power generation, transmission and distribution. In each of these areas, PHCN offers empty excuses. A common explanation by the company is that its customers are not paying appropriate prices for their consumption of electric power. But each time PHCN threatens to increase tariff, the people protest that they cannot pay for services not rendered. In many parts of Nigeria, power supply is withheld sometimes for months. Whenever there is trouble in the Niger Delta, we are told that the supply of gas to NEPA power stations has been disrupted, or that there is no gas at all: a strange excuse in a country where gas is flared and wasted. At other times, we are told that the water level at the Kainji hydro-power station has gone down. In 1999, the Obasanjo government promised to raise power generation from 2, 000 MW to about 10, 000 MW in 2007. Between then and now, PHCN has received over N332 billion from the Federal Government. In the 2006 Budget, PHCN is taking about N57 billion. In the last seven years, about 20 additional power stations have been built to boost the national grid. These power stations were advertised as some of the biggest power projects in the world! Six power generation companies, one transmission company and eleven distribution companies have been set up to ensure greater efficiency and to decentralise the operations of the company. In December 2005, President Obasanjo also set up a Presidential Advisory Committee on power generation, transmission and distribution. This was after a retreat on the same subject that was held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. Liyel Imoke is the Chairman of that Committee. Its other members are his fellow Ministers (Finance, Water Resources, Science and Technology,) the Special Adviser to the President on Energy, the Minister of State for Petroleum, the Director-General of BPE, Managing Director of PHCN, the Group Managing Director of NNPC etc. So, why the excuses? Why is PHCN still distributing darkness and causing so much displeasure? Liyel Imoke who obviously enjoys talking was once quoted as saying that former managers of the PHCN/NEPA stole the workers' pension funds. But the right thing to do is to report such managers both past and present to the police or the EFCC. Every day, consumers complain about how PHCN officials collect money from them to buy transformers, or to adjust the meter, or to pay inflated bills. Is there a customer relations department in NEPA? If it exists, what does it do? Does the company ever make any attempt to investigate customers' complaints? Makoju says he has changed the way NEPA is run. But he is running an organisation which on a daily basis infuriates the people. In many instances, individuals and communities have resorted to physical action against PHCN officials and offices. In February 2006 alone, four of such dramatic incidents occurred. One, during the African Nations Cup, PHCN annoyed soldiers at the Akim Army barracks in Calabar when its officials chose to supply darkness at a time when a match involving Nigeria was being played. The angry soldiers left their barracks and stormed the Calabar District office of the company. They rough-handled the officials on duty and took two of them away to their barracks where they gave them a thorough beating and locked them up! Criminalconduct sure, but still a Nigerian solution to a Nigerian problem! Two, in Onitsha on February 6, demonstrators brought operations to a halt at an Area Business Office. They carried placards, chanted war songs, and barricaded the entrance to the office, in protest against what they called the "monthly crazy bills" distributed by PHCN. Three, in FESTAC, in Lagos, angry youths stormed the PHCN office and engaged the officials in physical combat. Those officials have since abandoned the office. Four, in Ikorodu, also in February, a mob descended on a PHCN district office. The staff were "held hostage for several hours, beaten up, their property especially handsets were stolen by the mob...the mob also broke into offices, destroyed all wooden and glass doors and windows and burnt some cars parked in the district office". All these in one month, and these are only the incidents that were reported in the media. Routinely, PHCN officials are subjected to such humiliation by an angry society. Even in Kainji where the famous Kainji dam is located, PHCN has serious problems with the communities. The people of that area are protesting that PHCN is not a socially responsible company. Although they help to generate power for Nigeria with their water resources, they are kept in darkness all the time. PHCN also has a staff hospital in New Bussa, but the local people are not allowed to use this hospital! Alhaji Mohammed Jibo, a member of the House of Representatives, speaking for these aggrieved communities had declared in January: "It is sad the way former National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) treats my people, either under Kwara or Niger State. It is worse than what the oil companies have been meting out to the Niger Delta areas since the incident at Oloibiri" (that is since the discovery of oil at Oloibiri). We may just wake up one morning to learn that Kainji communities have taken over Kainji dam! PHCN has been advised times without number to work on its community relations and place a greater emphasis on quality service delivery. But the sad reality is that it continues to treat the people with contempt. In the absence of electricity supply most families now depend on kerosene lamps. In the face of an artificial kerosene scarcity imposed on Nigerians, the people's agony has also worsened. The cost of kerosene per gallon has climbed, in the last month, from N350 to N700. Even at that price, it is not available. Petroleum products marketers have been accused by NNPC of diverting kerosene to the aviation sector as aviation fuel. More families are in consequence, opting for firewood, and if such families are in Abia state, they face a n even greater ordeal because the Abia state government has only recently announced that if anybody is caught felling trees either for firewood or any other purpose, such a person will be sent to jail. Governor Orji Kalu may have to build more jails! When a people continue to resort to self-help to get heard, they extend the possibilities of anarchy. When a public institution is as much a source of irritation as PHCN is, then it should be overhauled. The reluctance to overhaul PHCN, the foot-dragging over its privatisation may prove rather costly in the long run. The Fed Up With PHCN Vanguard wants us to wear "all black attire". It won't be too long before angry customers begin to kidnap PHCN officials, and demand ransom like the boys in the Delta creeks. After all, that is one method of communication that seems to work in this country.
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