The Int’l Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law (Intersociety) has dragged the Network Manager for Ogbaru Network Distribution of the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), Engineer Steven Uzodimma and his Feeder, Billing and Marketing Managers to the Managing Director of the Company, Mr. Praveen Chorghade, and the Company’s Chief Technical Officer, Engineer Vincent Obiora Ekwekwu.

“The top officials of the EEDC in Ogbaru were petitioned against for flimsily and incompetently throwing major parts of the Ogbaru Network Area (under Osamari 33 Feeder Lines) into almost one month of total blackout,” Intersociety revealed in a statement issued on Friday, February 18, 2022.

The statement which was jointly signed by Emeka Umeagbalasi, (Board Chair) and Chidimma Eva Udegbunam Esquire, (Head, Campaign & Publicity), alleged that the affected areas have over 500,000 inhabitants and tens of thousands of electricity customers and owners of billions of naira worth of energy-powered livelihoods, investments and appliances.

The group listed the areas affected to include Obodoukwu Road and its environs, Nkutaku Layout, Iyiowa Layout, Odekpe Layout, Atani, Okpotu-Uno and Osamari all in Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State.

Listing the “sins” of the petitioned EEDC officials, Intersociety said: “The Ogbaru top EEDC officials had severed all power supplies to the affected areas since 28th January 2022 following damages done to some feeder electric poles and stepped down high tension wires by fire outbreak that gutted a part of the Ogbaru Int’l Relief Market on same 28th January 2022.

“For more than three weeks, the affected areas were plunged into total darkness and when approached, the Network Manager told some persons discretely sent by Intersociety that ‘they are looking for donors that will assist them with about 13 electric poles that were affected.’

“The open market cost of the 13 electric poles is found to be less than N1M. In other words, over 500,000 electricity users in the affected areas and their multibillion naira energy powered businesses and other social fixtures and chattels were grounded to a halt and put at high risk just because of N1M.

“The Network Manager also incompetently said that ‘the work was contracted out and they are waiting for the contractor to move to the site and finish it,” the group alleged.

Intersociety further alleged that: “Even when the new high tension wires were supplied much earlier from Enugu, the incompetent Ogbaru EEDC top officials still refused to fix the problem and preferred to be sadistically joyous, seeing their affected consumers being in total darkness and their businesses and social lifestyles grounded to a halt.

“Totality of these speaks volume of serial incompetence and corruptive tendencies on the part of the Ogbaru EEDC top officials, especially its Network Manager who is grossly unfit to continue as a remunerated staff of EEDC, not to talk of continuing as ‘Ogbaru Network Manager’.

“Intersociety has also documented cases bordering on greed and corruption against the Ogbaru top EEDC officials who have systematically and cunningly cashed in on mass ignorance and limited education or ‘Onitsha Businessman Mentality’ culture of the adult population in Ogbaru, Onitsha and Ogidi environments to rip them off and short-change them.

“The greed and corruption cases had included and still include mass disconnection of the prepaid metered customers, questionably accused of ‘meter box/meter tempering.’ The disconnected prepaid customers are forced to open ‘negotiations’ which end in forcing them to pay millions of naira for each of the high rising buildings and this is a mandatory condition for restoring power supplies to them.

“In some, if not in many cases, the Ogbaru EEDC officials use the illegitimate services of military personnel or police crack teams to bundle the questionably accused into detention, all in a bid to force them to pay. The above was the case in Dec 2021.

“The Ogbaru EEDC top officials have also been issuing post-paid or paper meter users with outrageous estimated bills with outrageous amount (N20, 000-N30, 000 as monthly payable benchmark per consumer). Mass and indiscriminate disconnection and collection of bribes, in addition to “fixed disconnection fees” are also routine and indiscriminate.

“At the end of such shoddy exercises, millions of naira illicitly realized is privately pocketed. The Ogbaru top EEDC officials, apart from deriving sadistic joy in plunging their customers into perpetual darkness in the event of fixable or minor faults, also use same as an opportunity to make illegitimate private money from the affected individual and corporate customers or consumers.

“Fixing faulty electric transformers and procurement and replacement of their accessories including oil, ‘J & P’, fuses, art cables, armored cables, uprising cables, feeder pillar units and payment of EEDC registered contractors, etc, are now being borne by consumers through EEDC codified corruption process called ‘written undertaking for donation of transformers or their accessories.’These shoddy practices have long become the order of the day in Ogbaru, Onitsha and Ogidi Network Areas.

“It is on account of all these that Intersociety not only called for severe sanctions against the Ogbaru top EEDC officials who got hints of our petition and hurriedly restored power supplies to the affected areas under “Osamari 33 Feeder Lines/Sub-Station” in the evening of Thursday, being 17th February 2022.

Intersociety said it was “demanding for zero billing of each of the affected post-paid meter users in the area and crediting each of the prepaid meter users with N10,000 for the month of February 2022 as minimum monetary compensations for flimsily plunging them into total darkness for a cumulative period of almost one month.”

“We also demanded that all the shoddy practices highlighted above and in our letter must be permanently stopped and discontinued,” the statement added.