Many homes in darkness over inability to load electricity tokens

Many Nigerians are currently experiencing hardship and inability to load tokens on their prepaid meters, findings by Ripples Nigeria have shown growing anger and outrage on several social media platforms.

There have been different tales of woes from Nigerians who have been thrown into darkness because of the inability to load tokens on their prepaid meters.

More worrisome is the graveyard silence from the Electricity Distribution Companies involved like Ikeja Electric, (IE), Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) and others to address the issue as repeated calls, messages and emails to their customer care lines have gone unanswered.

It was gathered that the trouble started when the DisCos embarked on an alleged upgrade of their platform calling on customers to upgrade their meter, after the upgrade, customers have been unable to load tokens.

“For some weeks now, Ikeja Electric has been talking about its customers upgrading their meters. It seems the upgrading is causing a lot of problems because their customers have been finding it difficult to load tokens thereby putting them in darkness.

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“After loading the KCT tokens that were generated from their website and loading the tokens purchased by the customers, subsequent loading of tokens has become unbearable because the meters keep rejecting the tokens. I have been trying to load a token all to no avail.

“I am calling out IKEDC to stop stressing Nigerians with their ineffective upgrade. They are not responding to emails, WhatsApp and their social media pages. Who else is experiencing the same please? I’m so angry right now! IKEDC, stop stressing Nigerians please!!” a user posted on a social media platform.

A Lagos resident, Adesuwa Omon, expressed her displeasure at the lack of response from the DisCos.

“It’s quite appalling that you’d be providing a service like light and your customer care is absolute crap. @IkejaElectric you can’t tell me that you’re oblivious to the fact that people are unable to recharge their meters! Why are you not responding to calls or messages?” she tweeted.

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Another user tweeting from the handle OneCandleAway disclosed that he was at the office of the DisCo that supplies her community with power but met a crowd of people there experiencing the same hardship.

“Most of their offices have a lot of crowd there already, you can imagine that! Many people are without electricity because of this nonsense upgrade. Some recharged successfully but the meters didn’t supply electricity. If they cannot solve the issue, they should allow us to use electricity without the meters. The stress is just too much” he wrote.

Another user, Alli-Balogun H.Lekan appealed to the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu to intervene before Nigerians resort to anarchy.

“Good morning, Minister @BayoAdelabu, I’d like to draw your attention to the hardships inflicted on Nigerians, particularly by @IkejaElectric.

“An upgrade was initiated without proper preparation or a test run, causing issues for subscribers. Especially those of us with Momass meters. It has been impossible to load a token, despite the upgrade.

“Appeals to @IkejaElectric have been fruitless. Urgent intervention is needed; otherwise, people may resort to direct connections, bypassing the meter” he tweeted.