The lid has been blown off a multi-billion naira fraud in the operations of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria across the Niger. Specifically indicted are PHCN’s Business Units in Onitsha, Ogbaru and Ogidi (all in Anambra State) as well as the zonal headquarters located in neighbouring Enugu State.

The indictment was delivered by the Onitsha-based NGO, International Society for Civil Liberties & the Rule of Law (Intersociety) in a petition to the Minister of State for Power, (Hajiya) Zainab Ibrahim Kuchi, and Chairman of the Board, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Dr. Sam Amadi. Dated Dec. 3, 2012, the petition was copied President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan; Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State; Speaker, Anambra State House of Assembly, Chinwe Nwaebili; aMember, Representing Ogbaru Federal Constituency, House of Reps, Victor Afam Ogene; Dr. Sam I. Gekpe of PHCN Headquarters, Abuja; and Managing Director, Enugu Power Distribution Company PLC.

The petition had as title, “A Special Report: Multi-Billion Naira Fraud in Onitsha, Ogbaru & Ogidi Business Units of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria in Anambra State: Ogbaru Business Unit As Our Case-Study.” It was signed Intersociety’s Chairman, Board of Trustees, Emeka Umeagbalasi, and Head, Publicity Desk, Comrade Justus Ijeoma. It identified “the most deadly corrupt sub-units” in the said PHCN operational areas as the “marketing and distribution departments.” According to the petition, “While the marketing departments indulge in roguish consumer billing methods, their distribution departments commercialize installation and maintenance of distribution transformers and their accessories.”

The petition named names and gave details of 18 different fraud strategies allegedly employed by PHCN in the places under focus.

Below are excerpts of the 12-page petition:

“General Observations: It is our general observation that the 18 grouses listed above against the Ogbaru Business Unit are also our grouses against the Onitsha and the Ogidi Business Units. In other words, the sufferings of innocent consumers in the hands of criminal PHCN officials under the Ogbaru Business Unit are the same sufferings experienced by consumers in Fegge, Odoakpu, Nsugbe, Nkwerre-Ezunaka, Woliwo Layout and Omagba Phase 1 all under the Onitsha Business Unit and; Nkpor, Odume Layout, Obosi, Ogidi, Awada and Ugwuagba Layouts and Omagba Phase 11 all under the Ogidi Business Unit. Cases of criminal negligence, fraud, embezzlement, extortion, bribery and corruption are hereby established against the three Business Units of Onitsha, Ogbaru and Ogidi. These are subject to further thorough and unbiased administrative and criminal investigations into the 18 grouses complained of.

“We also observe that the 18 sharp practices complained of, which are a routine in the modus operandi of the three Business Units may most likely have the criminal blessings of the Enugu Zonal Office of the PHCN. In other words, the Enugu Zonal Office of the PHCN may most likely aid and abet. It is also our observation that the 18 sharp practices complained of are no where supported or condoned by any policy statements, missions, visions and aims and objectives of your two important public bodies. They are also not contained in the Nigerian Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005. They are called sharp practices because they are activities and conducts done outside the law or administratively prescribed processes.

“For instance, none of the 18 sharp or criminal practices is contained in the “Customers Service Charter” of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, which contains a 56-point rights and obligations of the customers, the PHCN management and the Government of Nigeria. What appears to exist in principle is the celebration of official thievery by the PHCN management by rewarding, promoting and punishing their staffers on the basis of ability or inability to defraud consumers ten folds of what their actual monthly consumption bills ought to be. In the two other important public documents made available on the official website of the Federal Ministry of Power titled: “Installation: Electronic Energy Meter” and “Benefits of Prepaid Meter”, none of the 18 sharp or criminal practices is found in them. Rather, they are mentioned in the three public documents as possible criminal practices in the PHCN, to be tackled head on once complained of. These 18 sharp practices are in gross violations of the Chapter Four of the Constitution of Nigeria especially rights to life, dignity of human person (right against mental torture), family life and information. They also violate the Chapter Two of the Constitution –rights to health and education as well as the EFCC, ICPC and Electric Power Sector Reform Acts of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The African Chapter on Human & Peoples Rights of 1981, which Nigeria signed, ratified and domesticated in 1983 is also utterly violated by these 18 gross sharp practices.”

Under “Our Demands” Intersociety wrote as follows: “In view of the foregoing, therefore, we firmly demand as follows:

Thorough, unbiased and conclusive administrative and criminal investigations into the 18 sharp practices complained of, which are leveled against the three Business Units particularly the Ogbaru Business Unit. In the area of criminal investigation, the criminal investigative agencies like Police, EFCC, ICPC and the SSS should be invited by your two important public offices.

“In investigating the 18 sharp practices complained of, the doctrine of Vicarious Liability (senior taking the punitive liability of his or her junior’s illicit acts due to his or her negligence or incompetence) should be strictly applied against the relevant PHCN top- shots including those occupying the offices named above.

“The failed Abazuonu Iyiowa 300KVA/33/415 substation (transformer) should be repaired as a matter of uttermost urgency.

“The 493 flat apartments attached to the said transformer, who installed same should be publicly commended and apologized to, after which a 6-month consumption-free bills should be issued to them. The so-called “monthly maintenance charge” of N500.00 per meter should not appear in the free bills being demanded of. The affected consumers must not be a party to any monthly bills from September 2012 till date having been in perpetual outage since then.

“A new 500 KVA/33/transformer should be provided and installed beside the said Abazuonu Iyiowa substation so as to balance the heavy load burden of the area.

“The entire outstanding transformers not yet installed including the 300KVA/33/0.415 given to Ogbeukwu village should be installed and energized immediately.

“Area or field survey should be conducted in the Iyiowa zone in all the substations therein so as to ascertain their conditions, and load-carrying capacities with a view to balancing their loads and effecting major servicing in them.

“The acts of inducing or forcing consumers to undertake the responsibilities of installing distribution transformers and maintaining faulty ones in the three Business Units under reference should be totally prohibited and made punitive for defaulting PHCN staffers. Also forcing the consumers to write undertakings “donating to or assisting the PHCN”, which is now a routine in the three Business Units should be totally banned.

“The present case whereby the consumers in the three Business Units are forced and commanded to pay criminally estimated monthly bills of at least N4, 500/N5, 000.00 per post payment meter, without recourse to units actually consumed captured in same, should be abolished. As a matter of fact, the use of estimated monthly bills to bill members of the public who have post payment meters should be forbidden in the entire Business Units under reference.

“Commercialization and hording of the allocation and installation of the prepayment electronic energy meters to their subscribers in the three Business Units particularly in the Ogbaru Business Unit should totally be prohibited. As a result, the instances highlighted above should be thoroughly investigated and the culprits severely punished and made to refund sums extorted to their victims.

“New prepayment energy meters should be massively allocated to consumers in the three Business Units particularly those in the Ogbaru Business Unit. Their allocations and installations should be truly free of charge as a matter of practice. The deliberate and criminal technical conditions and demands attached to their operational usage by the PHCN technicians with a view to further defrauding the consumers should be monitored and prohibited.

“All the senior occupants of the relevant PHCN offices, to wit: former BM for Onitsha, the SMD for Onitsha, former BM for Ogbaru, the SMD for Ogbaru, the Undertaking Manager for Ogbaru, the new BM for Ogbaru (for aiding and abetting) and the former Maintenance Manager for Iyiowa PHCN office as well as other senior and junior staffers connected to distribution and related departments, who were on seat between June 2011 and June 2012 should be thoroughly investigated over their remote and immediate roles in the Abazuonu Iyiowa 300KVA/33/0.415 transformer installation scandal. If wholly or partly found culpable, they should be punished proportionately to their levels of involvement. Any of them found innocence should be spared.

“The marketing departments in the three Business Units should be thoroughly audited for 2011 and 2012 fiscal years to ascertain the amounts defrauded in the name of “estimated bills” so as to ascertain what were paid into the official PHCN coffers and the remainders and their whereabouts. For issuing fraudulent bills to the innocent consumers and short-changing them to the tune of billions of naira since 2011, the former and incumbent BMs of the three Business Units should be administratively and criminally sanctioned.

“The heads of the PHCN offices above mentioned including the heads of marketing departments in the three Business Units should criminally be investigated so as to ascertain their present lifestyles including their movable and immovable properties and compare them with their monthly salaries and allowances paid to them since 2011. In this context, your two public bodies should refer them to relevant security and criminal investigative agencies.”

•Photo: President Jonathan, one of those to whom the petition was copied.

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