By Ishaya Ibrahim, News Editor
How much is a prepaid metre in Nigeria? The question becomes relevant becomes the federal government said in August that there would not be duties paid for its importation in the next one year.
Three months down the line, the price has remained the same. The benefit of the waiver has not trickled to the electricity customer who still pays N48,000 to purchase a single phase metre or N86,000 for the three phase equivalent.
The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the government agency responsible for enforcing standards in the electricity industry, has ignored TheNiche’s request seeking clarification on how much the prepaid metre cost in view of the government intervention.
This newspaper sent a letter to the NERC corporate communication officers on October 6 via info@nerc.gov.ng, michael.faloseyi@nerc.gov.ng, samuel.ekeh@nerc.gov.ng, following complaints from customers that the prices of the metres were no longer being displayed on the bank teller, instead they were asked to request the prices from the banks.
Our request letter to the NERC reads: “We have followed the presidential directive on the waiver granted to importation of prepaid metre. The idea as we understand, is to reduce the cost of the prepaid metre. We have not seen any clear statement from the DISCOS informing Nigerians how much a prepaid metre now cost.
“We also noticed that the Metre Assess Providers (MAP) no longer print the price of the prepaid metre on the teller they issue to customers who wish to acquire it. They would rather tell customers to go to banks and enquire how much they are to pay. Please kindly tell us what the current price of metre is in Nigeria to enable us better inform the public.”
More than a month after our letter to the NERC, the regulator ignored the request and the prices of the prepaid metres have not been impacted by the duty waiver.
Aside the waiver policy on prepaid metres, the federal government has also approved a mass metering programme for the country where it said six million of the metres would be deployed in the first phase at no cost to customers.
It is not yet clear if there will be an option of paying for metres again following the federal government free metering policy.
