FCCPC Tells Electricity Consumers to Follow Procedures in Lodging Complaints
The Acting Executive Vice Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), Dr. Adamu Ahmed Abdullahi, has advised electricity consumers to always follow official procedures by bringing their complaints through their respective DISCOs before escalating them to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and the FCCPC.
Abdullahi gave this advice yesterday in Lagos at the “Electricity Consumer Complaint Resolution Platform,” which was dubbed a one-stop shop for addressing the billing, metering, transformer, connection, disconnection, consumer service and other electricity consumer issues in Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) coverage areas.
He said: “The consumers should have confidence in their service providers (DISCOs) and feel free to complain to them first because that is what the law says.
“Without complaining to your service provider you should not escalate the matter to a sector regulator like NERC or even to the FCCPC.
“We keep appealing to consumers not to take the laws into their own hands but to ensure that they lodge their complaints in the right manner,” adding that they should be “courteous when they lodge their complaints as opposed to being chaotic or trying to show that they can use force.”
He also advised the DISCOs to be forthcoming whenever a customer approaches them with issues because it is their primary responsibility to provide customers’ services to electricity consumers in Nigeria.
“This not FCCPC’s core competence area. It is the DISCOs that have these customers and provide services to them. So, it is them that have the primary responsibility of offering customer services to their consumers and addressing and resolving these complaints on their own.”
Abdullahi described the platform, which the FCCPC has taken several states in the country in collaboration with the Mac Arthur Foundation, as an intervention programme to bring all the stakeholders together to listen to electricity consumers’ complaints and resolve them.
He assured the consumers that any of their complaints that were not addressed during the four-day programme would be resolved within a given time frame.