The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has imposed a hefty fine of N200 million on Abuja Electricity Distribution Plc (AEDC) for tariff violations resulting in customer overcharging. The penalty was announced in a statement released on Friday by NERC, which also mandated AEDC to reimburse affected customers by April 11.<\/p>\n
The fine stems from an incident on April 4, when AEDC acknowledged a system glitch that led to the overcharging of some Band A customers. These customers had already been downgraded to Band B due to increased hours of electricity supply in recent weeks. The overcharging occurred as customers attempted to recharge their meters following the implementation of the new tariff regime, placing them in a precarious financial situation.<\/p>\n
NERC had previously approved an increase in electricity tariffs for Band A customers on April 3. According to the commission, customers receiving 20 hours of electricity supply daily were to pay N225 per kilowatt (kW), up from N66.<\/p>\n
Commenting on the fine, NERC stated that its decision followed a thorough review and customer feedback, revealing that AEDC had applied the new tariff to all customer bands, contrary to regulatory directives aimed at ensuring fair billing practices.<\/p>\n
The regulator directed AEDC to reimburse all customers in Bands B, C, D, and E who were billed above the allowed tariff bands specified in the order. The reimbursement is to be provided through the issuance of the balance of customer tokens at the applicable rates, with all reimbursements to be completed by April 11, 2024.<\/p>\n
Additionally, AEDC is required to pay the sum of N200 million as a fine for the flagrant breach of NERC’s order and must submit evidence of compliance with the directives by April 12, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has imposed a hefty fine of N200 million on Abuja Electricity Distribution Plc (AEDC) for tariff violations resulting in customer overcharging. The penalty was announced in a statement released on Friday by NERC, which also mandated AEDC to reimburse affected customers by April 11. The fine stems from an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":26158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,173],"tags":[808],"class_list":["post-26156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abuja-reports","category-business","tag-nerc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26156"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26165,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26156\/revisions\/26165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}