DisCos Deliberately Denying Customers Meters — Say Nigerians

Following a disclosure recently by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) that 59.6 percent of electricity consumers in the country were still on estimated billing as at March 2020, Nigerians have reacted angrily, alleging that the distribution companies are deliberately denying Nigerians the choice of owning prepaid meters for their own interests.

Speaking to ThisNigeria on the issue, several unmetered customers said the DisCos are benefitting from outrageous profits imposed by estimated billing, fearing that they would rake in less revenue from metered customers.

It may be recalled that the NERC had released a statement saying: “Of the 10,477,856 registered electricity customers as of the end of the first quarter of 2020, only 4,231,940 (40.39 per cent) have been metered.

“Thus, 59.61 per cent of the registered electricity customers are still on estimated billing which has contributed to customer apathy towards payment of electricity bills.”

The regulatory agency said the huge metering gap for end-use customers remained a key challenge in the industry.

The NERC said in comparison to the fourth quarter of 2019, the number of registered and metered customers increased by one per cent and eight per cent respectively.

The commission said the increase in registered customer population was due to the ongoing customer enumeration exercise by electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos). The regulator said that through the exercise, unregistered consumers of electricity were brought unto the DisCos’ billing platform. It also attributed the increase in metered customers to the rollout of meters under the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) scheme.

The regulatory agency said all the DisCos recorded progress in the metering of their electricity customers as of March 2020, compared with December 2019.

According to NERC, the metering status of the DisCos as at March 2020 is: Benin DisCo, 54.23 per cent; Abuja, 52.73 per cent; Eko, 50.71 per cent; Ikeja, 45.47 per cent and Enugu , 44.85 per cent.

Others are: Port Harcourt, 38.52 per cent; Ibadan, 37.11 per cent; Jos, 31.80 per cent; Kaduna, 23.60 per cent; Kano, 21.11 per cent; and Yola, 20.44 per cent.

NERC said it would continue to monitor the DisCos’ implementation of the MAP scheme in order to meet the target of closing the metering gap in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) by December 2021.

The commission added that it had, during the quarter under review, approved more preferred MAPs for DisCos that had finalised their MAP’s procurement processes, thereby increasing the number to 29.