The Chief Executive Officer of Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Rekhiat Momoh, has raised serious concerns over widespread electricity theft by high-income residents and hotels, describing the practice as one of the biggest contributors to the worsening financial and operational crisis in Nigeria’s power sector.
Speaking at a PwC power roundtable in Lagos recently, the EKEDC CEO disclosed that electricity theft is more prevalent in high-income areas and involves well-known hotels and influential individuals.
“Energy theft is a big problem. From experience, we have noted that energy theft is more prevalent where the big men live. We all know that if a big man or a rich man steals this energy and a poor man steals, it’s not the same,” the CEO said.
She added that EKEDC had uncovered cases of large commercial establishments illegally bypassing meters, significantly worsening losses across the network.
“We have seen cases where known hotels, including four-star hotels, bypass meters, stealing this energy and thereby increasing the losses for almost everyone. We are even in talks recently with one of the hotels that was caught bypassing. I wouldn’t want to mention the name of the hotel because we are in court,” she stated.
The CEO said EKEDC currently serves a customer base of about 789,000 and has mapped out short-, medium-, and long-term goals aimed at improving performance in a sector still struggling years after privatisation.
“We have a customer population of 789,000. Our short-term goal is commercial excellence and closing the emission gap.
Our medium-term goal is customer centricity, that is, the improvement of technology. And our long-term goal is market effectiveness,” she said.
Momoh noted that despite privatisation, Nigeria’s power sector continues to grapple with structural and operational inefficiencies.
“The Nigerian power sector, even though it has been privatised, still has a lot of issues, especially regarding energy. As we all know, power is the driver of any economy. If there’s no power, no economy can grow,” she said.
The CEO said EKEDC has begun taking steps to reduce downtime caused by delayed fault detection with the acquisition of fault locators.
Source: Punch
