Man bags three years jail term for stealing prepaid meter.

One Segun Abiodun has been sentenced to a three-year jail term after being arraigned before the Agbara Magistrate Court on a count of stealing a prepaid meter in the Ajangbadi area of Eko Electricity Distribution Company’s network.

In a statement signed by the EKEDC General Manager, Corporate Communications, Godwin Idemudia, the defendant, Abiodun, an installer for one of the meter asset providers stole a meter allocated to a customer in the Ajangbadi area of Lagos and sold it to another customer in Agbara, Ogun state.

Idemudia said “the meter installer sold a customer’s meter to an unsuspecting customer who wanted to do his due diligence by buying units on the said meter, but our system flagged it as the meter had already been allocated to another customer in an entirely different location.

“Upon investigation, it was discovered that the installer stole the meter and sold to the customer”.

The Magistrate, MBI Ilo found Abiodun guilty on the said charge and sentenced him to three years imprisonment.

He ordered him to be remanded at the Ilaro facility of the Nigerian Correctional Service for his jail term.

Idemudia urged customers to go through the official process of applying for prepaid meters via the company’s website at https://ekedp.com/online_meter_order rather than going through people posing to be meter agents to avoid being defrauded.

Also, he appealed to customers to report any case of demand or extortion from staff or agents to the company through its whistleblowing email and phone number (whistleblower@ekedp.com fraudwatch@ekedp.com 08000033333).

Idemudia reiterated that the company will continue to ensure that fraudulent and unprofessional practices become a thing of the past by applying full weight of the law on erring vendors and staff involved in such practice.