Customers Drags Ikeja Electric To NERC Over ‘Fraudulent’ Bills

A customer of Ikeja Electric has accused the power supply office of giving him outrageous and fraudulent like-bills since he moved to his new apartment.

The complainant, who is a staff member of PUNCH Nigeria Limited, Ogidi Stanley, dragged Ikeja Electric to the Nigerian Electric Regulatory Commission (NERC) to lament the development, which has frustrated him over time.

Truetells Nigeria learnt that the electricity user resides in Adiyan, Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State.

He was said to have moved into his three-bedroom bungalow in the area in October 2022.

Narrating his ordeal, Stanley explained that he has been receiving “very unjustifiable and outrageous” electric bills from Ikeja Electric.

“I applied immediately to Ikeja Electric for service on my property. After fulfilling all the necessary requirements and payments for registration, Ikeja Electric created an account for me; ACCOUNT NUMBER: 0102628269,” the journalist said.

According to Stanley, on December 11, 2022, Ikeja Electric sent him the first bill of N42,735.98. He said he was shocked at sighting the bill.

“I ran to my neighbours in the CDA with the bill, only to find out that no resident of that area and its environs were paying any amount more than N4,000.00 (Four thousand naira only) as electricity bill on a monthly basis.

“I immediately called the marketer of Ikeja Electric for the area, one Mr Lateef and complained to him. He advised me to ignore the bill and pay the normal amount paid by others which is N4,000.00, promising that he would rectify the anomaly from their end (Ikeja Electric). I paid as he had instructed,” he said.

Stanley said the power supply office has since sent him outrageous and fraudulent bills.

“On January 12, 2023, Ikeja Electric posted a bill of N46, 773.25 to me; on February 13, 2023, the company posted N26, 242.26 to me.

“On February 14, 2023, I wrote to Ikeja Electric, raising the alarm over these crazy bills. After about a week, I got a call from one Mr Nathaniel of Ikeja Electric. After much questioning, he said he had referred my matter to Adiyan undertaking, but Ikeja Electric kept posting these outrageous bills to me,” he explained.

On April 17, 2023, Ogidi said Ikeja Electric sent an SMS to him, requesting him to visit their Olambe office, at No 50 Olambe Road, Ifo Ogun State, for Debt Dispute Resolution.

“I went there on April 2023. I explained all these situations to them, and after much interrogation, the unit manager apologised and told me that THEY REGISTERED ME UNDER A WRONG TRANSFORMER. Explaining that the Ikeja Electric official who handled my registration registered and created an account for me under Olambe transformer instead of Adiyan transformer. They promised to resolve the mistake within three weeks through their mapping systems. However, the official requested that I pay N20,000.00 (Twenty thousand naira only), representing a 20 per cent of the outstanding amount so as to initiate the process of mapping. Unfortunately, NOTHING has changed and has been done since then to reverse the ugly trend.”

The aggrieved Ikeja Electric customer lamented that this happened despite paying the N20,000 fee requested by the company.

According to him, on June 12, 2023, Ikeja Electric posted a bill of N64, 005.50 to him, putting his total amount due at N302,859.21.

“The current bill sent to me is now N302, 859.21,” he said. Ogidi said he became frustrated and decided to escalate the matter to NERC.

It was gathered that several efforts were made by Stanley to get Ikeja Electric to react to the allegation but yielded no results. He also noted that several calls and messages sent to an IE’s spokesperson, Ayeni Akinola, were not responded to as of press time.