Morning VP, be warned, you may be losing me!

Dear Sir,

For those who really know me, I may be one of the easiest persons that a Nigerian government can satisfy. This is for a reason. I know the depth of the challenge of running government in Nigeria and am familiar with what is involved. But I also know one chief reason why Nigerian leaders fail: they forget themselves.


Yes, one of the prime killers of good men in government in Nigeria is amnesia. The opulence and basic non-accountability of the system sucks them in and they lose their humanity. It is that simple. I have made this point in an earlier piece asking for the Aso villa to be turned into a fee-paying museum. I still hold that view and my premise is simple: as presently constituted, the villa is too big, too lavish and too out-of-touch with the reality of the mass of our people. It was built at another time when the ruling notions were about imperial domination, not democracy. Today it is an anachronism, a leech that sucks off the little innocence left in hitherto simple men. And Mr. Vice President sir, I am afraid that 'Aso Rock' has begun to get at you.


Trust me, this conclusion has not been arrived at casually. Rather, it is the product of reasoned, exegetical analysis. Months ago, I wrote a piece lauding your commendable involvement with the establishment and functioning of the Office of the Defender during your stint as Commissioner for Justice in Lagos State. Now it is my lot to conversely point out what Professor Wole Soyinka would describe as ‘the road you are not taking.’


So what is 'the new one you have now done' as my people would put it? It is simple. A few hours ago, you were credited with having stated in a parley with the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria that: ‘we must be ready to accept that for a while, until things stabilize somewhat, (electricity) tariffs cannot remain at the levels at which they are today... It certainly means that there may be higher costs, but I don’t think that an option of not having power is really what we want. The real issue of course is that at the end of the day, some of the cost goes to the consumer, but a cost reflective tariff is an absolute necessity, otherwise, privatization and all of that simply doesn’t make sense.”


Sir, from where you are today, you make your point most indulgently; but let us also make ours. No one is really afraid of paying cost reflective tariffs. But we need to put things in their proper sequence. There must be service before costs. And again, you will really have to watch what you say and what signals you send out. Because you are speaking for the Presidency in a yet executive-dominated country!


Let me explain. The truth of our society today is that there are many contending agendas out there. There are the wishes of the masses and there are the schemings of the affluent. It is therefore the responsibility of those that govern us to always remember that their mandate must always be used to serve the common good.

Broken down, your current logic on our power conundrum may very well be serving primarily the interests of the DISCOs and notably, their insistence on continuing for as long as they can, with the ignoble and discredited practice of estimated billing.


Again, we say no one is afraid of cost-reflective tariffs. But like the House of Representatives has rightly argued, no one should also be compelled to pay for services he has not received. And your government must not join in propping up a system that compels consumers to pay for services not rendered. That, Professor, would not be right before God and man. It would also not qualify as one of the hallmarks of modern democratic living in Nigeria which you have been forsworn to defend.


Indeed, you got close to hitting the nail on the head when you talked of the estimated 40 percent losses in the current transmission and distribution chain. There is not only a primary challenge of halting these losses but also dealing with a second regretable fallout, that today those costs are being passed on majorly only to those Nigerians who haplessly continue to find themselves on the estimated billing platform! And figures suggest that well over 50 percent of electricity subscribers in the country fit in here. So you see why you need to be reminded that whenever you speak, it should be in the defence of the common good or at the very least, in the interest of the greater majority of our people whom you are elected to serve!

For this majority, the first call of duty is simply and squarely about putting an end to the estimated billing system. This practice is obnoxious and vexatious. And there is a sense in which it is also patently wicked given that it is really the poorer segments of our society that are carrying this cup of hemlock. And so month after month they continue to get bills that are heavily at variance with those served their neighbours who are lucky enough to have received the few prepaid meters that the current system has so grudgingly offered.

Mr. Vice President Sir, you had served in Lagos and seen first-hand the reason why for very many years, many of our people did not want to pay their taxes. They were not persuaded that their monies would be mis-applied! When successive governments put in more resources to work in schemes that the people could see, compliance rates rose. It is a similar situation with electricity fees. Improve supply, strengthen its justiceability and watch cost-recovery levels rise.

Your National Electricity and Regulatory Commission, NERC appeared to be getting close to a solution when it came out with its Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation, CAPMI scheme as a first step in ensuring that DISCOs provide meters for all. But that is largely being observed in the breach today. And even that scheme is not the first time that the DISCOs were asked to serve meters to their subscribers. Months earlier, NERC had commenced an initial pay for meters scheme. Under that cover, the DISCOs brutally jerked up their estimated bills for a few months while it lasted. Till date, they have kept mum on how the fleeced sums would be accounted for. Mr. VP sir, we may indeed have a cost-reflective tariff issue going forward, and will cross that bridge when we get there, but what is urgent today is that we do not have a just billing platform for over 50 percent of subscribers. That in any country worth its salt and led by people of integrity is a monumental scandal. And that is what we must first address.


So we request that you and your principal should get together on this subject and work out a 'Marshall Plan' to ensure that every electricity subscriber gets a prepaid meter that will facilitate his getting a just bill for electricity that he truly uses. I will really be surprised if you cannot fix this.


Sincerely,


Citizen Richard