The Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Sam Amadi held a meeting with members of civil society organisations, representatives of industrial, commercial and residential electricity consumers to consider a concept note on consumer advocacy network in Abuja.
Amadi noted that information asymmetry was not in the interest of electricity market even as he recommends that geographical or occupational clusters of knowledgeable consumer advocates need to be galvanised to promote accessibility and reliability of service in the market.
He, however, cautioned that efforts at establishing a virile consumer advocacy groups should be based on rational economic decisions rather than an attempt at instigating the consumers against the operators.
According to him, “there is a noticeable under-representation of consumer voice, with superficial and adversarial tendency that lacks impact.
“This is in sharp contrast to the powerful position of the service providers, who though few in number, have the fund and negotiating power to push their demands, thus, a deficit in the democracy of the electricity market.”
‘’A deficit occurs when the ordinary processes of governance of an institution creates and reinforces disempowerment of critical stakeholders of an institution. In this case, the system is the Nigerian electricity market and the critical stakeholder that is disempowered is the consumer’’ Amadi said.
The concept note on the formation of an advocacy network is to be fine tuned by a 15-man committee of the various advocacy groups present at the interactive session and would be presented to a reconvened session at a later date.
The network will be expected to develop and implement a robust work plan to educate electricity consumers on their rights and privileges about critical electricity issues, conduct regular studies aimed at market issues on a sustainable basis.