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The Chief Executive Officer of Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), Mrs Rekhiat Momoh, has raised alarm over widespread electricity theft by high-income residents and major hotels, describing the practice as a major contributor to the deepening financial and operational challenges facing Nigeria’s power sector.

Momoh disclosed this while speaking at a PwC Power Roundtable held recently in Lagos, where she revealed that electricity theft is more prevalent in affluent areas and often involves influential individuals and well-known hospitality businesses.

According to her, energy theft remains one of the most critical problems undermining the sustainability of electricity distribution companies.

“Energy theft is a big problem. From experience, we have noted that energy theft is more prevalent where the big men live. We all know that if a big man or a rich man steals energy and a poor man steals, it is not the same,” she said.

The EKEDC boss disclosed that the company has uncovered several cases of large commercial establishments, including four-star hotels, illegally bypassing electricity meters, thereby worsening losses across the distribution network.

“We have seen cases where known hotels, including four-star hotels, bypass meters, stealing energy and increasing losses for almost everyone. We are even in talks recently with one of the hotels that was caught bypassing. I wouldn’t want to mention the name of the hotel because the matter is currently in court,” she stated.

Momoh said EKEDC currently serves about 789,000 customers and has outlined short-, medium- and long-term strategies aimed at improving efficiency and service delivery in the sector.

She explained that the company’s short-term focus is on achieving commercial excellence and closing the emission gap, while its medium-term objective centres on customer centricity through improved technology deployment. The long-term goal, she added, is to attain market effectiveness.

“We have a customer population of 789,000. Our short-term goal is commercial excellence and closing the emission gap. Our medium-term goal is customer centricity, which involves the improvement of technology. Our long-term goal is market effectiveness,” she said.

The EKEDC chief noted that despite the privatisation of the power sector, Nigeria continues to face serious structural and operational inefficiencies that hamper economic growth.

“The Nigerian power sector, even though it has been privatised, still has a lot of issues, especially regarding energy. Power is the driver of any economy. If there is no power, no economy can grow,” she said.

She attributed part of the sector’s challenges to decades of reliance on manual and outdated operational practices, which she said exposed the system to fraud and inefficiency.

“For decades, the energy market has been rooted in traditional practices. We were all doing manual metering, which is prone to fraud and numerous issues,” she noted.

Momoh explained that the absence of real-time monitoring systems has made it difficult for distribution companies to promptly detect faults and fraudulent activities.

“Previously, even when there was fraud, there was no way of knowing. Eko DisCo is currently the only system with SCADA, which we are using to monitor some of the faults we face. However, we need to upgrade it, as we have about 54 electrical substations, but only 15 are currently connected to SCADA,” she disclosed.

She said EKEDC has begun addressing downtime caused by delayed fault detection with the recent acquisition of fault locators.

“There is always downtime because it is only when customers report faults that we become aware. By the time we arrive, we still have to manually locate the fault. However, we have just acquired five fault locators, each costing about N490 million, to help reduce downtime,” she said.

The CEO stressed that the lack of real-time data remains a major obstacle to operational efficiency and revenue collection in the sector.

“Without data, you can’t do anything. A lot of analysis is required, even for fault clearing and revenue collection,” she said.

On the financial health of the power sector, Momoh said distribution companies are under severe strain, as banks are unwilling to provide loans based on accounting profits rather than actual cash flow.

“The financial crisis persists because no bank is willing to grant loans based on ‘paper profit’. They want real cash,” she said.

She also identified inadequate power generation as a fundamental challenge, noting that while Nigeria’s installed generation capacity stands at about 13,000 megawatts, available capacity fluctuates between 4,000 and 5,000 megawatts.

Momoh further disclosed that legacy debts amounting to trillions of naira, poor collection efficiency and deteriorating infrastructure continue to weigh heavily on the sector.

“We have obsolete, dilapidated and invalidated transformers. In areas like Orile and Ajegunle, you will still find dilapidated networks within our coverage area, which increases technical losses,” she said.

She added that huge debts owed by ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), as well as uncollectable customer debts, have further compounded the financial crisis.

“We have significant sums owed by MDAs. We also have huge uncollectable debts because people move from one house to another, leaving unpaid bills behind,” she said.

According to her, high interest rates and vandalism of power infrastructure have also worsened operations, even in high-end locations.

“You can imagine that even in places like Ikoyi, we are facing vandalism. There are also high interest rates, which no Disco can afford,” she said.

Despite the challenges, Momoh identified smart metering as a critical solution to tackling electricity theft, inefficiency and revenue leakages in the sector.

“What is the way forward? Smart meters,” she said.