By Dennis Mernyi
The industrial action by bats the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) has shut down all operations of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) indefinitely.
The workers are protesting over the outstanding payment of about an N41billion escrowed in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
FCT chairman of the Union, Comrade Godfrey Aba said, “the industrial action will be withdrawn only when our demands are met.”
Speaking further, he explained that the action has culminated in an outage in all AEDC franchise areas that include but are not limited to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kogi, Niger, and Nassarawa.
According to him, it was expected that before the strike the Federal Ministry of Power would have intervened in the industrial crisis.
“Since they have not done that we are still waiting for them to liaise with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure this money is released so that that not only our staff will receive their entitlements, our customers will begin to enjoy better services.
“It is about N40 billion. They (CBN) are supposed to release N2.5billion on monthly basis. And it is now getting to two years”, he stated.
In 2019, the CBN escrowed the accounts of the DisCos and there was an agreement that the Apex bank release N2.5 billion monthly to the company.
Apart from salaries, the AEDC, according to him, can no longer pay its staff pension, check-up dues and cooperative deductions and others.
He noted that it is only AEDC that the CBN is sitting on its monthly payments.
Aba revealed that Apex bank had sent its team to confirm that the outstanding claims of expenditures of AEDC were real.
The union accused the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) of standing aloof while the crisis ranges.
The spokesman of the Commission, Dr. Usman Arabi, did not respond to calls.
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The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in a statement informed that it has available bulk power for delivery to the distribution load centers of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) to offtake for its customers.
“However, power evacuation from injection substations across the AEDC franchise area has been disrupted following a shutdown of the AEDC facilities by its in-house workers’ union. The areas under the AEDC franchise include Abuja, Nasarawa, Kogi, Parts of Edo, Niger and Kaduna States.
“TCN regrets this disruption and assures Nigerians that normal bulk power delivery to AEDC will be restored as soon as the injection substations are opened for onward electricity supply to consumers”.
