Nearly 60% of consumers account for 6.529m registered users
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Nearly 60 per cent of energy consumers or 6.529,442 registered users are yet to be allocated meters, despite directive by President Muhammadu Buhari that prepaid meters be deployed free nationwide to stop inflated estimated billing by DisCos.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) disclosed the numbers in its Second Quarter 2021 report, the latest one, in which it lamented the metering gap and described it as a major problem in the power sector.
Abuja announced in October that it had distributed about one million free meters to electricity consumers across the country in the past 10 months under the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP).
The prepaid meters are supposed to be free but reports abound of extortion in various forms by meter installers.
The government disclosed that the number of unmetered power users had increased by about two million while the metering gap at the start of the NMMP in 2020 was about six million.
Buhari’s Infrastructure Assistant Ahmed Zakari disclosed this in a television interview monitored in Abuja by The PUNCH.
The latest NERC report shows, however, that only about 41 per cent of power users have been metered, meaning about 60 per cent still receive estimated bills.
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Mechanism to prevent bloated estimated billing
“The huge metering gap for end-use customers is still a key challenge in the industry. The records of the commission indicate that, of the 11,058,939 registered energy customers as at June 30, 2021, only 4,529,497 (40.95 per cent) have been metered.
“This implies that out of every 10 registered electricity customers, six are without meters; thus, they are on estimated billing,” the report said.
But the NERC explained that it has devised a mechanism to prevent outrageous estimated billing of customers.
“Using averages (of) three-month consumptions of metered customers on each feeder, maximum allowed energy consumption estimates were computed for each customer category and tariff band.
“Thus, for each class of customer on a feeder, an energy estimation cap is established to guide the DisCos (distribution companies) and thus protect unmetered customers from being over charged while awaiting appropriate metering.”
Complaints about metering were among the highest concerns recorded by DisCos in Q2 2021.
Eleven DisCos received 241,476 complaints from consumers in Q2 2021, up 1.91 per cent on Q1 2021, according to the NERC.
