The management of Kano Electricity Distribution Company has expressed serious concern over the poor electricity supply being received by the company from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), especially during this Ramadan period.
The managing director of the company, Malam Abubakar Yusuf made the complaint while addressing a news conference at the headquarters of the company, yesterday.
He lamented that the company has for the last three months been receiving 180 megawatts for distribution to its customers in Kano, Katsina and Jigawa states which he said is grossly inadequate.
“We felt it necessary to address you on the shortage of power supply being experienced in the states so that you can enlighten our customers about the current challenges.
“This is necessary because we are the last in the value chain because we can only distribute what we have. No businessman will deliberately deny his customers goods,” he said.
According to him, the company requires 600 megawatts for adequate and effective supply to its customers in the three states.
“We need 600 megawatts to adequately serve our customers in the three states which are our franchise areas,” the MD said.
He therefore called on customers in the three states to bear with the situation as the problem is not peculiar to Kano but the country at large.
He also noted that the fire outbreak at Dan’ Agundi transmission station on Sunday had seriously affected the company’s operation in electricity supply as one of the high-performance capacity transformers was burnt beyond repair while the other one had to be repaired.
On revenue generation, the managing director said the company would engage the services of religious leaders to sensitise customers to desist from electricity theft through illegal connections and metre bypass among other illegal acts.
“We received N14 billion invoices monthly but the collection is 25 percent or N3.5 billion which is far below what we’re expected to collect as revenue due to refusal of our customers to pay their electricity bills.
“So, we believe by the time our religious leaders preach in their sermons how Islam and Christianity forbid electricity theft, it will go a long way in checking the illegal acts,” he said.