Mushin Residents Lock Horn With Eko Electricity Distribution Company

Mushin Electricity Consumers Residents, a community in Lagos State, is currently at loggerheads with the Eko Electricity Distribution Plc (EKEDC) over the firm’s billing system.

The residents are unhappy over the company’s inability to give its consumers prepaid meters and the outrageous billing.
To drive their point home, the residents recently carried out a peaceful protest on 1st of December, 2018 to show their disaffection with their predicament.

Some of the placards they displayed carried inscriptions like: “Give us prepaid meter;” “We are tired of crazy bills,” and so on.
Chairman of Joint Community Committee on Residence  Welfare, Comrade Bankole Olaseni Ahmed who spoke to us during the protest, said that the people of the area had suffered much hardship at the hands of officials of the electricity company for too long.
He lamented that despite the robust assistance to EKEDC, what the people got in return was maltreatment. He said the entire community had been in darkness for months.

In his statement, he said "Sincerely, those in charge of our electricity are nothing but a fraudsters. They have refuse to give us prepaid meter just because they knew it will reduce their fraudulent activities. If we are been giving the prepaid meter, there won't be any reason why a residents will have to bribe them with money just to avoid his line from been disconnected.

Sometimes they collect two thousand naira from each house to reconnect some electricity. And the most painful things is that, after collecting all this bribe, they end up in beer parlour lavishing the money but they knew if prepaid meter is been supply, there won't be any reason to bribe their officials again. Prior to that, we decided to have a meeting with them and express our grievance. We told them we're tired of their extortion."
He also said "after the whole dialogue we propose a fix amount of two thousand Naira but we later conclude that every house should paid four thousand Naira every month pending the prepaid meter will be distributed. And for the past four months now, we've been paying four thousand naira. Meanwhile, they notice the new development have stop their quite corruptions, so they decided to question the latest development"

"So, we noticed they've started conniving with some people within the community to put some street in darkness."
Also speaking at the protest was Chairman Mushine Electricity Consumer, Imam Moruf Okusanya who said, the essence of the protest is to free the people of the community from Eko Electricity Distribution Supply (EKDC)'s bondage saying "The reason why we are gathered here today is to free ourselves from the bondage of Eko Electricity Distribution Supply who have been extorting us unnecessarily."

"We don't get constant electricity and every end of the month they share crazy and outrageous bill. How can we be paying for something we did not use. We waste money on fuel to power our generators and still they want us to pay unreasonably bills. So, when thought about the disadvantage this was causing us within the community, we decided to have a meeting with them (EKDC) in their office that they should give us prepaid meter so that we can be able to monitor our bills but they refuse to provide us with the prepaid meter instead they started dribbling us." The chairman said
When he was asked about some of the steps taken, he said "we have been to marina, the company head office to complain but all our effort prove abortive. When we realized they are just playing us, we concluded within ourselves and we pass the message across to them that, pending the time they will provide us with the prepaid meter, we won't pay more than four thousand Naira every month even if they bring one hundred thousand Naira bill, we won't pay more than four thousand Naira and if they are not comfortable with this, they should give us prepaid meter and they accepted."
The community however, seek the attention of the federal government to intervene in the issue before it get out of hand as the community promised never to relent until They started getting value for their money.
Meanwhile, some of the dwellers advice the leaders to seek legal action before it turn to a crisis.