For the victims, it was a most traumatic experience and an assault on their dignity.
It appears that savagery flows through the veins of the Air Force personnel in Lagos who invaded the headquarters of the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) early this month. They smashed offices and de-humanised many of the workers on site because the company cut off their barrack's electricity supply due to an unpaid N4.34 billion debt.
In truck loads, the fully armed soldiers landed and scaled fences into IKEDC's premises, pointing guns at hapless civilians. Office equipment were vandalised, especially ICT infrastructure, including closed-circuit television cameras (CCTVs), to prevent their being identified. Members of staff were forced to lie on the floor, including a pregnant woman, and they did not spare customers, journalists and passers-by either. For the victims, it was a most traumatic experience and assault on their dignity. A senior executive of the company was so severely injured that he was immediately hospitalised.
The ferocity of the attack by the Air Force personnel was so frightening that the managing director of IKEDC, whose driver had just driven her in at the onset of the assault, was alleged to have swiftly hidden to avoid being hurt. Telephone handsets of workers were confiscated and some of them later smashed. Moreover, 17 IKEDC vehicles were reported hijacked and forcefully taken to the Air Force barracks, using the company's drivers. It is difficult to understand such barbarity from those who are supposedly "officers and gentlemen."
The ugly incident, parts of which was captured on the company's CCTV infrastructure, despite effort to conceal and destroy evidence, has gone viral, raising many fundamental questions about governance in Nigeria, and indicating why the country is short of foreign direct investment. The mean, unruly, thuggish and unprofessional officers of Sam Ethnan Air Force Base in Ikeja, under the command of Air Vice Marshal Adediran Ademuwagun, should hide their faces in shame for this crude, animalistic and embarrassing display, which violated the rule of law and code of behaviour in any civilised society.
All the personnel involved in the attack should be identified and appropriately sanctioned, if discipline, often flaunted as a virtue in the military, still has any meaning to the institution. Equally, AVM Ademuwagun has some questions to answer, given the lead up to the atrocious act. Mr Sunday Oduntan, the managing director of the Association of Electricity Distribution Companies, in a round of television interviews on the incident, pointed out the AVM's participation in several meetings the IKEDC held with the Air Force Command, in attempts to resolve the matter. He was also copied in all correspondences exchanged by parties.
Therefore, he cannot claim ignorance of this grave misconduct by his subordinates. Such claim could only mean he is not in control of his men. Our consideration is premised on the 4 October 2024 meeting between the two parties on how to install a device that would guarantee power supply based on the-ability-to-pay template. Mr Oduntan said he attended that meeting, even though he was indifferent to the idea tabled for discussion.
Again, on 2 December, a high voltage prepaid meter was to have been installed, that would stave off the further accumulation of debts. But it is alleged that the IKEDC technicians who went for the installation were denied access and threatened. These measures were said to have been preceded by correspondences to the Air Force base, which the military hierarchies in Abuja were copied on.
As a result of all this, the AVM's visit to IKEDC's office a day after the mayhem and pledging to investigate the matter and sanction those involved accordingly can only be regarded as a dishonest and hollow public relations ritual. We believe that it is only fair for the electricity company not to reconnect the Air Force base until it liquidates its debt. The unwillingness of the Air Force command to pay such a humongous N4.3 billion debt explains, in part, why electricity distribution companies and other entities in the supply value chain are delinquent in service delivery. IKEDC is said to be entitled to only about 20 per cent of this debt, while the rest are due to the power generation companies (GenCos) and Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Perhaps, the Air Force's adamancy in paying its electricity bill is similar to the attitudes of other ministries, departments and agencies of government. In February, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) issued a 10-day notice to 87 MDAs to pay their accumulated debt of N47 billion or risk disconnection. Included in the notice was the Presidential Villa. That notice rattled President Bola Tinubu, who then ordered the immediate payment of the N342 million owed by the State House. Other debtors comprised the National Assembly, the Central Bank of Nigeria, Defence Headquarters, and the Ministry of Petroleum Resources; all of which could not claim to have problems of illiquidity in paying their electricity bills.
Indebtedness to the electricity sector is a perennial concern that needs to be resolved. The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, once screamed, "How do you expect the GenCos to perform optimally? How do you expect them to pay for gas, service and maintain their turbines and other infrastructure, as well as pay their staff if a total of N4 trillion is being owed to them?"
As if the misconduct of the Air Force Base in Ikeja was not enough, another unruly gang of soldiers invaded an office of the Eko Distribution Company (EKDC) in Badagry on 14 March, reportedly abducting two staff members because of poor power supply to their barracks. An aberration such as this could not have arisen in the first place if the power privatisation guidelines of 2013 were strictly followed. World-class players in the sector were expected to bring in investments that would trigger substantial improvements in service delivery.
Regrettably, national interest and global best practices were sacrificed for cronyism and patronage of members of the ruling party. Hence, the new owners of the legacy electricity corporation neither had the required financial capacity, nor technical know-how to run the sector, which plunged the country into darkness that persists till date.
The abundance of electricity supply is pivotal to a productive economy, and the then candidate Bola Tinubu realised this much during his 2023 election campaign. He promised Nigerians that, "If I don't give you constant electricity in the next four years, don't vote for me again." But it is a shame that national electricity supply still fluctuates between 3,000 and 5,000 megawatts for a nation of over 200 million people.
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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has publicly confessed his regrets on being unable to fix the national power situation, and regards it as his biggest failure in office. Muhammadu Buhari also flunked this throughout his eight-year rule, and the possibility of not solving the problem presently stares Mr Tinubu in the face, with the incessant collapse of the national grid, which occurred 12 times as of December 2024.
As the Commander-in-Chief of the nation's Armed Forces, Mr Tinubu should rein in the service men who appear to have a penchant for egregious assaults on defenceless civilians. An unruly military that harasses, intimidates, maims and needlessly kills innocent citizens without consequences, may see themselves as super citizens beyond the ken of the rule of law in our democratic space. This is a dangerous trend that should not be tolerated and must immediately stop.
Prepaid metering of electricity consumers should be vigorously pursued to entrench transparency for both the suppliers and consumers of electricity in Nigeria. Poor implementation of the metering policy has encouraged exploitative and dispute-ridden billing system, which aided the absurdity unleashed on IKEDC by the Air Force. The DisCos cannot be willy-nilly in metering their customers - public or private - more than a decade after taking over the market.
However, if the public sector remains a chronic electricity debtor, evident in the N47 billion debt earlier cited, and despite annual budgetary provisions for defraying this cost, then the government should see itself as an undertaker of the power sector and a colossal saboteur of a burgeoning productive economy and national development.
