The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) says the 11 Electricity Distribution Companies (DISCOs ) have so far metered over 3 million electricity customers in the country as at August 2017.
NERC, in its September metering initiative and statistics report for the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), also revealed that there was a metering gap of over 4 million customers by the distribution companies (DISCOs) in the month under review.
The report, published on NERC’s website on Tuesday in Abuja, indicated that total number of customers of the DISCOs as at August stood at over 7 million.
Some Nigerian household consumers had adopted the ‘no meter no payment’ strategy against the Distribution Companies (Discos) following earlier directive by Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria’s vice president, that Maximum Demand (MD) customers should resist paying estimated electricity bills in protest against non-provision of pre-paid meters.
In addition, the Government has said that Distribution Companies (DisCos) do not have any monopoly for the supplies of prepaid meters to the electricity consumers, adding that it would neither prevent any electricity consumer from buying prepaid meters from the power DisCos nor prevent DisCos from selling to consumers, provided the process is not abused.
The NERC report also showed that Ibadan DISCO, with highest number of customers, records the highest metering gap of 864,760, while Eko DISCO has 173,643, the lowest in the period under review.
The report indicated that part of the mandate for the privatization of the Discos was the rolling out of metering to the consumers.
According to the report, 100 per cent metering of consumers will result into revenue protection and loss reduction.
It said that provision of meters would provide safeguards from unfair billing practices for customers.
It added that the commission was working on modalities to eliminate all forms estimated billing.
The report indicated that innovative options were being put in place by the commission to improve status of metering and customer concerns on estimated billing in the NESI.
It listed some of the innovative options already being considered to include the Meter Service Providers (MPS) Scheme, Modified Credited Advanced Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI) and Franchising.
“MSPs are financial institutions, Venture financiers or even OEMs (Meter Manufacturers). MSP has capacity to provide comprehensive meter services to customers“, the report stated.
