The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Tuesday said of the 10,477,856 registered electricity customers as at the end of the first quarter of 2020, only 4,231,940 (40.39 per cent) have been metered.
NERC made this known in its First Quarter 2020 Report on its website.
The regulatory agency said the huge metering gap for end-use customers remained a key challenge in the industry.
“The records of the commission indicate that 59.6 per cent of electricity consumers in the country were still on estimated billing as at March 2020.
This, it said, was despite a slight improvement recorded during the quarter.
“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 commission said.
It 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.
NERC 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 at 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.
