Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt
The Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED) has distributed free electricity meters to selected government schools in Rivers State and sensitised students on electrical safety as part of its 2026 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme.
The initiative, which was carried out at Government Model Secondary School, GRA, Port Harcourt, is aimed at improving the learning environment while reducing incidents of electric shock and other hazards associated with unsafe electricity use.
Speaking with journalists after the exercise on Tuesday, PHED Head of Communications, Mrs Olubukola Olawale, said the programme demonstrated the company’s commitment to giving back to the communities it serves.
“Being a socially responsible organisation, one of the things we do at PHED is to ensure that we touch the lives of our customers. It is not only about collecting bills; we also think about what we can do to impact society,” she said.
Olawale explained that the beneficiary schools were carefully selected based on identified needs and their demonstrated commitment to protecting the facilities provided.
“We didn’t just select schools randomly. We carried out sensitisation and developed indices to identify schools that we considered responsible enough to take care of the meters,” she said.
She added that school authorities were educated on meter preservation and warned against tampering with the equipment or engaging unqualified personnel.
According to her, PHED, which operates across Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross River States, would extend similar interventions to schools in the other states.