Nigerians dodging their bills hold back electricity generation growth
By
David Whitehouse
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Posted on
January 20, 2022 15:53
Khalil Woli used to work for Ikeja Electric, Nigeria’s largest power distribution network, in Lagos. He would go door to door in 2018, checking on electricity meters to see who was trying to dodge paying.
The people who would try to avoid their bills, he says, were often wealthy. They would not pay for their consumption because it seemed easy and they thought they would never get caught. “They had been doing it for years and no one ever knocked on their door before.”
The widespread cheating meant that electricity distribution companies were “haemorrhaging cash,” Woli says. Part of his job was to