By Constance Athekame
The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company(AEDC) says it is collaborating with stakeholders in the power sector to ensure steady electricity in it franchise areas.
The Managing Director of AEDC, Mr Chijioke Okwuokenye, said this in Abuja on Thursday while interacting with newsmen.
He said, ”We are doing a lot when it comes to partnership to introduce a better generation in certain areas that we know that the grid is not strong enough to provide the volume of energy needed.
”There is a 350 Megawatts (MW) generation plant being built by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC) around Gwagwalada, that is meant to come up either the last quarter of 2026 or first quarter of 2027.
”That alone is going to massively relieve Abuja and environs of energy costs.
We are working closely with the NNPC to see how we can uptake that power and improve service delivery to Abuja. So I am very sure that by this time in 2027, all these issues will be resolved.”
Okwuokenye also said that the company was doing a lot in partnership to introduce embedded generation in certain areas that the grid is not strong enough to provide the volume of energy needed.
According to him, in 2025, the company increased its energy intake by almost 15 per cent from what it had in the previous year.
He, however, said that power had not been able to get to everywhere for a number of reasons, adding progress was being and the future looks very bright.
”Talking about achievements, we have done a lot in terms of loss reduction.
“In 2025 alone, we brought down our losses from about 42 per cent to 32 per cent 10 basis point reduction in losses over the course of one year.
“We have also done a lot in terms of meeting our market obligation.
“I can tell you that before now. AEDC was one company known to have br debts to the market because in the past we were unable to meet our payment obligation to the market.
“That is now in the past. We are meeting 100 per cent our obligations to the market and even paying down previous debts,”he said.
The managing director also said that from 2025 to date, AEDC had metered 70,000 customers under the Distribution Sector Recovery Programme Metering Initiative(DISREP) and The Meter Acquisition Fund (MAF).
”These are real customers that have been moved from estimated billing to credible billing, thereby improving customer satisfaction and confidence, and also improving the liquidity in the market.
”This is a very, very big growth because for us at the DISCO, the aim is to ensure that we achieve 100 per cent metering of all our customers,”he said.
Okwuokenye said that the company was constructing a new feeder in Wuse to improve the power reliability in that area.
He said that by the second week of March, those in Wuse would be experiencing nothing less than 20 hours of uninterrupted supply.
“The company was creating redundancy, bringing in new feeders, and ensuring that even when there are faults and outages, AEDC will do backfeeding through its redundant network.
”We are also doing a dedicated feeder to Idu and the the regulator is currently reviewing it and is going to ensure uninterrupted power supply in the industrial area.
”The idea is to create clusters of positive impacts, which will create the confidence both in investors and in customers that AEDC is able to deliver on its promise,” he said.
He appealed to the customers to be patient with the company as it is working hard to ensure that it provides them with constant and reliable electricity.
He said that the issue of energy theft and vandalism were posing serious challenge to the company and appealed for vigilance on the part of Nigerians.(NAN)(www.nannews.ng)
Edited by Kadiri Abdulrahman
