EDITORIAL: FirstPower: Who Orchestrates the Brazen Robbery Tagged ‘Estimated Billing’?

By David-Chyddy Eleke

The perennial lack of electricity power in Anambra State has become a huge worry. At a time when Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo is slaving hard to make Anambra a liveable homeland, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and their subsidiary; FirstPower Electricity Distribution Company is truncating that deam.

Electricity is a major need in modern living, so Prof. Chukwuma Soludo in his quest to bequeath Anambra people good life must liaise with FirstPower to solve the power conundrum in Anambra.

It is even more pertinent now that power distribution has devolved, with Anambra State government overseeing the operations of their own chosen electricity power distributors (FirstPower), through Anambra State Electricity Regulatory Commission (ANERC).

What this means is that any failure registered by FirstPower is failure on the part of Anambra State government which registered and empowered FirstPower to operate in the state.

As worrisome as power availability has been under the watch of FirstPower, what is even more worrisome is the brazen robbery being orchestrated by the company in the name of estimated billing.

In a block of shops that this newspaper knows, their estimated bill has always stood at N80,000 as at 2025 (before FirstPower came). Mind you, within 2025 and the years before, power was relatively steady in the same area. Fast-forward to 2026 after FirstPower took over in late 2025, the estimated bill in the block of shops which houses petty traders and other small businesses has under FirstPower sharply risen to as much as N150,000. Some months come with bill as high as N180,000, and this is even as power supply has dropped drastically to an all-time low.

For power consumers who use prepaid meters, the low supply may be bad, but at least they can be sure that their expenditure on power is determined by supply. If you fail to supply power, the prepaid meter user conserves already acquired token. But this is not the same with consumers under estimated billing.

Under estimated billing, consumers wake up once every month and get humongous bills that have no correlation with their consumption. Not even the poor supply of power makes the estimation low, and one is tempted to believe that this is bare faced robbery. Then the question that comes to mind is – who orchestrates this brazen robbery tagged estimated billing?

In another block of shops that this newspaper is familiar with, the rising cost of electricity as estimated by FirstPower even without supplies has forced some shops that have no power needs in the block to pull out. The inhabitants of the shops have announced to FirstPower officials that two out of five shops within the block have pulled out, with the hope that the company will take note and re-estimate the bill in current month, but you know what – the bill for the next month came out even higher than other months. So, who estimates the bills for consumers without prepaid meter?

Gone are the days when power supply was handled by public companies. Today, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and its subsidiary; FirstPower Electricity Distribution Company are all private companies. No private individual should be allowed to rip off others to grow itself.

If FirstPower were mandated to ensure full metering of all consumers before billing, I’m sure they will promptly meter every consumer to avoid losing energy to free consumers. But today, the disadvantaged people who are unmetered, who should enjoy free power pending when they are metered are now the cash cow of the company.

This must stop! Estimated billing is akin to highway robbery and Anambra State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo, Anambra State government and Anambra State Electricity Regulatory Commission (ANERC) must not look away while their law abiding citizens are ripped off. If FirstPower is not ready for business, Anambra State government should offload them and get better alternatives.