Be responsible to your customers, Niger govt tells AEDC

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Niger State government has asked the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) to be more responsive to its customer and attend to their complaints as and when due.

The government also said it had expended over N3 billion on the purchase of transformers and service wires that ought to have been done by the AEDC, over the last seven years.

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The Secretary to State Government, Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, stated this while addressing the media on the purported N1.9 billion the company said the state government owed it.

Matane said there were still over 10 proposers from communities requesting the state government to assist them with transformers while several calls to the AEDC by the government to respond to the needs of the communities were neglected.

He added that the power distribution company had not been responding to complaints from communities even when facilities break down, calling on the company to be responsible to enable customers to derive satisfaction from their service.

“If you buy a transformer today, tomorrow AEDC would say it has become their property and when the same facility breaks down, it will take them months without fixing it,” he said.

The SSG said what the state owed the company was a little bit over N1 billion but was not up to N1.9 billion as claimed, explaining that in addition to off-setting the debts, the state was still paying current bills.

He added that the state government had already contracted a consultant to verify the validity of some debts “Because we realised that there are some old facilities that are not functional but they still appear as part of the bill.”

It would be recalled that the AEDC had disconnected government offices including the office of the SSG and the state house of assembly over debts amounting to N1.9 billion.