Benin and Niger Republics pay Nigeria outstanding $10m electricity bill after being threatened with disconnection

NIGER and Benin Republics have both paid Nigeria $10m after the federal government threatened to disconnect their electricity supply over unpaid bills under a power-sharing agreement that the three countries have.

In 1963 when Nigeria announced plans to built Kainji Dam, she entered into agreements with her neighbours that they would not dam the river to ensure there was adequate flow of water to the hydro-electric power station. Since the Kainji power station opened in 1968, Nigeria has been supplying Benin and Niger Republics with electricity and over recent years, these debts have built up.

Threatened with disconnection, both countries made the payment through their respective power firms, with Nigelec of the Republic of Niger paying $3.79m, while the Community Electric du Benin of the Republic of Benin remitted $6.32m to Nigeria. On July 11, President Muhammadu Buhari decided to join operators in the power sector in calling on international customers receiving electricity from Nigeria to either pay their bills or be disconnected.

Nigeria sells power to the Republics of Togo, Niger and Benin and classifies the West African countries as international customers. Officials at the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, said that international customers, paying for the power received from Nigeria in dollars, owed the country, which had increased the financial indebtedness of Nigeria’s power generation companies.

Minister of power, works and housing, Babatunde Fashola, revealed in July that President Buhari was working hard to ensure that the electricity debts by the country’s neighbours were cleared. Mr Fashola subsequently directed the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) to go ahead and collect its money from the international customers.

He added: “We issued disconnection notices and that is why I’m asking NBET to go and collect money because we have duties, obligations and international agreements with them as brother and sister nations. So, we have issued letters to them to pay their bills and from time to time, they pay.

“There was a time one head of state came to visit President Buhari and little did I know that the real reason he came was to come and tell him that the power sector had issued a notice of disconnection to his country. You may be interested to know that President Buhari simply told him to go and pay, otherwise we will disconnect you because we are also paying at home.”