There was an uproar in Abuja on Tuesday when employee of the AEDC was stabbed to death while disconnecting the electricity of customers who didn’t pay their bills.
The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company employees were on duty in the Kabusa area of the Federal Capital Territory when the incident occurred.
The Herald gathered that the body of the deceased has been deposited at the mortuary in Garki Hospital, Area 8, Abuja.
It was learnt that the assailant has been arrested and is in police custody. The head of Corporate Communication at AEDC, Oyebode Fadipe, confirmed the attack.
Fadipe, however, stated that the AEDC would pursue the case to the logical conclusion and will no longer take the recurrent attack on their officials lightly.
In a related development, a worker of the Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Dele Ogundele, has been hospitalized after his leg was allegedly broken by a sergeant attached to the house of a Former Inspector General of police, Mohammed Abubakar, for disconnecting the power in the house.
It was gathered that the house of the Former IGP owned N154,693.85 to the Eko Electricity Company, and in this regards, Dele climbed the electric pole to disconnect the power, but was dragged down by the policeman who beat him up.
The sergeant whose name was given as Attah Annioko, was said to have beaten the worker and boasted that “nothing will happen” to him.
The matter was reported to the police at the Ikoyi division, and the sergeant arrested with investigations ongoing.
The Head of Corporate Communications Department, Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), Mr. Godwin Idemudia, who confirmed the incident, said the sergeant had been detained.
He said: “What we do is that anytime customers don’t respond and pay their bills, we go out with copies of their bills. When we get to their houses, we tell them what they owe and ask if they had made any payment in the last 24 hours. If they can’t produce any evidence of such, we disconnect their electricity.
“That was what we did in this case. We had two of our vehicles working in the area on that day. On getting to the house around 12 noon on Thursday, October 19, a man came out and we asked for evidence of payment because we discovered that the house owed over N154,000. When he couldn’t produce it, we said we would disconnect the power. The man flared up.
“The mobile policeman came out, and while our official was disconnecting the power from the pole, he ordered him to come down. In fact, he dragged the official down and beat him up. In the process, the official sustained injuries and his left leg was broken.”
Pursing the case of a dead man to a logical conclusion makes no sense at all. Let the DisCos be compelled to obey set rules and orders by NERC and there will be order. People have be cheated beyond patience!