How I Became The 1st Female MD Of EKO Electricity Distribution Company

•MD, Dr. TINUADE SANDA Tells CityPeople

When the news broke last year March that the pretty looking Dr. Tinuade Sanda had been appointed the Managing Director of Eko Electricity Distribution Company, the first time a lady would be so appointed, many outside the organisation were curious to know who this ‘first female MD’ is. And they were stunned at first, and were left totally impressed afterwards with what they saw of her background. If truth be told, they don’t come any better than Dr. Tinuade Sanda. She is young looking, extremely intelligent, fiercely focused and with a lot of accomplishments under her belt. And what’s more, she is an incredibly enchanting lady, one of the finest women with tons of substance upstairs that you’ll possibly ever come across on this side of the globe. But if you were meeting her for the first time, you could be making a big mistake underestimating her intellect and capacity as a woman on account of her absolutely gorgeous look. This is because, beneath that adorable looking façade, lies one of the most incredibly brilliant and tenacious women you can ever find anywhere in the world. That’s how undeniably remarkable Dr. Tinuade Sanda is.

Let us tell you a bit more about this outstanding woman of substance so you understand why many are in awe of her intimidating profile. Dr Tinuade Toyin Sanda started her career in the banking sector. Within the banking sector, she led different roles and at a time the relationship manager in Chartered Bank in 2001. She later joined Access Bank in 2003 where she gained extensive experience in branch operations, customer service, cash management and retail credit management. Prior to joining Eko Disco in 2013, she was the Head, Finance and Administration at Vanguard Energy Resources, a leading oil and gas trading services company.

Dr Tinuade Sanda is versatile in the areas of Financial Reporting, Treasury Management, Taxation, Mergers and Acquisitions, Finance Regulation, Risk Management and Financial Modelling. She was the maiden Chief Finance Officer at West Power and Gas Limited, a special purpose vehicle that successfully acquired a 60% controlling stake in EKEDC, the leading electricity distribution company in Nigeria. While at West Power Gas Limited, she was seconded to EKEDC to assume the role of Chief Treasury and Taxation Officer, later Acting Chief Finance Officer and Chief Accounting Officer where she was responsible for managing the financial operations of the business.

In March 2022, Dr Tinuade Sanda was appointed as the first female Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of EKEDC. Prior to her appointment as MD, she was the first female Deputy Managing Director. She is an expert in the power and finance sector with an extensive experience in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry. She holds awards and prestigious memberships of many professional bodies in Nigeria and abroad, a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Institute of Management Consultants, Institute of Credit Management Administration and Institute of Professional Financial Managers, United Kingdom, an associate member of Risk Management Association of Nigeria and the Institute of Directors, Nigeria. She obtained Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) with specialism in Strategic Planning from the Edinburgh Business School, Herriot Watt University, Scotland, UK after previously graduating with a second-class upper degree in Accounting from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. On the 5th of December 2020, Tinuade Sanda was conferred by the Senate and Governing Council of ICON University of Management Science and Technology, Benin, with a Doctor of Philosophy in Financial Management & Entrepreneurship. But despite all of her impressive career achievements, Dr. Tinuade Sanda remains a calm and unassuming lady. She oozes unbelievable humility and would never flaunt the fact that she is fast becoming one of corporate Nigeria’s emerging powerful young players. She remains intensely focused on her job with an unwavering desire to take EKEDC several notches higher than she met it. And she is supremely confident she can do this. She says she has a fantastic management team working with her and believes they are already on a good momentum to making EKEDC the most flourishing and most applauded Disco in the land.

Two weeks ago, the duo of City People Deputy Managing Director, FRANCIS OWOJORI and Senior Editor, WALE LAWAL (08037209290) met with Dr. Tinuade inside her cosy Marina office. She opened up on the progress she has made so far and the many things she and her team are doing to improve power distribution. Here are excerpts of the interview.    

The very first question I would like to ask you is, how has it been for you on this seat because this is probably one of the hottest corporate seats you can find anywhere in the country today as we speak?

(Smiles) So, I was appointed MD/CEO March 30, last year. After the euphoria of being the first female MD had died down, I realised the work ahead of me, the task and the challenges I needed to surmount. And at that period of time, we had very poor allocation in Nigeria in terms of generation and we had to start managing customers’ expectations, reaching out to them, and also look at how best we could effectively distribute the little energy we were getting. So, one of the first things we did was go out on series of customer engagement forum to meet with the customers and explain the challenge we’re facing, tell them our plans and how we intend to improve on customner service delivery. Then, you know, as a team, we looked inwards to see what are the low hanging fruits we can work on to ensure that our consumers get power. All they just want is affordable power, safe delivery 24/7. So, what we did was look at the allocation we were getting and ensured that there was discipline in the way we were distributing the energy, looked at our people and ensured that we put the right people in the right team that can deliver on the assignment and also very importantly, we looked out for staff that are customer friendly, that understand passion for work. Also, with our customer service department, we rejigged the customer experience team so that our consumers can feel our pulse and know our plans. And we started improving on communication also. With our communication department, we have become quite active on the social media space. They have also been engaging consumers on Whatsapp groups to ensure that once there are issues, we communicate first time and they could hear from us. So, it was difficult trying to balance work, home and other personal life objectives. But, its been interesting, it’s been fun. And it’s not just about me, I have a very good team support from my management staff, they have been very instrumental to what we’ve beenb able to achieve in the last nine months.

So, how have things panned out between that time and now? Are you getting the sort of results you were hoping you would get?

Yes, we have recorded quite a lot of positive improvements even from our customer experience. So, in terms of power supply, except for the last few days where we have had gas limitation issues, in the month of December there were days we were able to give customers 24 hours uninterrupted power supply and we have had a lot of testimonies from different consumers across our own franchise area. And we have also seen the response rate. You know, when consumers are happy, they pay their bills. So, we have seen quite some significant inremental response from consumers in paying their bills. And also, as a company, we embarked on metering last year. You know, when you meter consumers, you are able to record accurately the energy that they have consumed on a monthly basis. That has helped to show more transparency between us as Ekodisco and our consumers. Currently we’ve been pursuing the mobile map metering scheme where when we’re in each station we do it within 72 hours, when you apply we make sure that your meter is ready within 72 hours. And also, if you go on our website and apply, after ten working days, after all applications have been approved and you’ve made your payments, you’re expected to be installed. So, that also helped the consumers and Ekodisco’s relationship that, yeah, we are sincere, we care for their needs and we try to meet their needs. And in the course of the year also, we invested in buying transformers, especially for areas where customers have been agitating that they have overloaded transformers and we are not giving them enough supply because we need to keep load shedding. So, we also invested heavily on transformers and that also gave us positive feedback.

In terms of making transformers available for consumers under youer franchise area, what volume are we talking about here?

Okay, we got order for 200, as at December 2022 we had received 120 transformers and out of the 150 we had installed about 110.

Can you shed more light on the issue of prepaid meters? Some people are complaining that it should be given free by the government, how do you respond to this?

Okay, so, meters are free and that’s the truth. However, the scheme we are running right now is, through the meter asset provider scheme, the customer pays for the meter and as they are vending we are meant to refund them over a three year period. So, the meters remain the assets of the distribution company. So, even when customers have advanced the payment of the meters, we are going to refund them the cost of that meter over a maximum of three years period. Now, why was that scheme introduced? Every Discos have their metering plan. We have our metering plan. And the fact that I have a metering plan, let’s say today I want to meter Marina here, and someone in Ibeju wants meter right away and cannot wait for me on my plan, that scheme is available. Plug into it, pay for the cost of the meter, nothing more, and we refund you the cost of the meter.

How would you do that?

Through the vending. As you are vending for token to load your power, there is a payment with which we will refund you.

I know that one running battle all of the Discos have had to contend with is that of unmetered customers, how have you been able to deal with that at your end?

Yes, we have some unmetered customers within our network area but what we’ve done is to have a methodology on how we bill them to make sure there is transparency and fairness. However, we encourage our consumers to key into the map if they cannot wait for the metering plan that I have because with my metering plan, when I enter a particular transformer, I want to ensure that those consumers on that transformer are fully metered before I move to another one. But however, you know customers agitation, they might not be patient enough for me to move to maybe five transformers away, they want their meter now, so they can key into the map. Yes, I still have some and we’ve been doing a lot of sensitization to consumers for them to key into the map so they can be metered on time.

Can you explain this monster called ‘estimated billing’?

(Laughs) That’s the methodology I just talked about. And it’s not a monster. What I’ve seen with people is that when people are on prepaid meter, you tend to ensure that you have discipline on your consumption. You can monitor yourself. But when it’s estimated meter, you’ll see a lot of houses, if you go into Lagos Island now, their light bulbs are on, they don’t control their consumption, but when they know that they have a meter that is accurately reading, they will switch off their freezer overnight, switch off their ceeway and leave only one air-conditioner on. But where there’s room to contend that, ‘no, I didn’t use this amount of energy, now you’re giving me a monstrous bill’ like you said,  that’s when you see them leave all their electronic gadgets on and unattended to but the moment they start using a meter that reads accurately, you see them become more disciplined with their consumption. 

So, what is the yardstick that you use for the billing?

The yardstick that we use is this. Today, we’ve metered our distribution transformers, so if I have ten houses connected to these different transformers, I have already metered the DT (Distribution Transformer). So, I have an idea what energy consumption these ten houses had consumed on this DT, of course maybe you have three, four, five or six customers metered on a particular DT, so we look at those six that have been metered, we look at their average then deduct it from the total energy reading on a DT, then with the remaining balance that’s left you try to do an estimate. However, we also consider that there could be energy theft or energy losses, technical losses, so we also account for that while trying to do the estimate.

You will agree with me that no matter how hard you try to get your staff to conduct themselves responsibly, you will still find a few bad eggs, and there’s quite a handful of them, so what are you doing to reorientate them and knock them in line?

So, for Ekedc, our core values are, ‘I serve.’ Integrity is our number one watch word. Yes, I agree with you that we might have some bad eggs and for Eko, its zero tolerance for any malpractices, any extortion from consumers, or failure to do what you should do at the right time, so we have proper mechanisms put in place. Our condition of service for all employees are stipulated different guidelines for different tasks and the implications of whatever your decisions might have been. We also encourage our consumers to report whenever they observe any of our employee behaving in an unscrupulous manner. We have our whistle blowing channels, we have our dedicated email addresses, we have dedicated phone lines where consumers can lodge such complaints and we take it up. And also, you can walk into any of our call centers and we take it up and look into it. For us, it’s zero tolerance for fraud.

What added pressure has being the first female MD of EKEDC brought you on the job?

For me, I don’t think there is a specific pressure that being the first female MD has brought on the job than the usual challenges that comes with the office. On assumption of office, we were faced with industry challenges such as aging network, availability of energy for distribution, employees’ welfare, financial liquidity, customer satisfaction etc and all these we are currently addressing as a team.

Tell us about growing up. Were you the regular young lady back then or you were always studious and keeping to yourself, because to be honest, perhaps because you’re very young looking, you don’t cut the look of someone who has all of what you have under your belt. You look absolutely gorgeous you could’ve passed for somebody in the fashion and beauty line.

Haha…. I must have taken that fashion style from my mum. I was just the regular young lady, with a sibling brother and male cousins around when growing up.

Did you have a clear idea of where you were headed in life right from when you were a young girl and who between mum and dad, influenced you more as a teenager?

I will say I was influenced by both. My Dad was a straight-forward person, and I guess I got that trait from him. My mum, very calm, no matter the tension or pressure, which I have as well. I might not have had a clear idea, but I believe what is worth doing is worth doing well. I believe in excellence, and these I believe had brought me thus far.

You are clearly a very fashionable lady, how did that part of you evolve?

Thank you (smiles)…. As I said, I must have taken that aspect from my mum. She ensured the bag goes with the shoe and matches the attire she is putting on. That consciousness was what I inherited and has formed part of my personality.

You are clearly a very smart and incredibly brilliant woman, I am curious, where were you born, where were you raised?

I was born in Ibadan and raised in Ibadan. But I schooled in Ife.

Are you from Oyo state?

No, I am from Osun State.

Where in Osun State?

I am from Ejigbo.

How do you unwind when you’re not on this seat?

I like to travel most times when I have the time. I like to visit places I haven’t been before and I enjoy reading books in my spare time.

How about parties, do you attend parties, like  our normal ‘owanbe’ events?   

Yes, I attend social events. Of course, I can’t attend every party I am invited to but I choose the parties I attend and just try to have a bit of fun.