International bilateral customers from countries such as Niger, Benin, and Togo made a total payment of $50.36 million to the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) for electricity distribution in 2023.
This is contained in the 2023 annual report and account from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), seen by Nairametrics on Tuesday.
According to the report, Societe Beninoise d’Energie Electrique (Benin Republic); Compagnie Energie Electrique du Togo (Togo); Societe Nigerienne Electricity (Niger) received an invoice of $53.55 million in the same year, making the payment a 94.04 percent remittance performance in the same year.
The NERC data also indicate that as of 2023, NESI has a total number of 19 active domestic bilateral customers.
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Extending beyond the three foreigners, a total of nineteen domestic bilateral customers were active throughout the year.
The overall invoicing for these nineteen customers reached a significant N10,320.84 million, but the payment performance was comparatively lower. These customers made payments totaling N8,766.15 million, corresponding to a remittance performance of 84.94 percent.
While this figure shows that the customers managed to remit a substantial portion of what they were billed, it still left an outstanding balance of 15.06 percent, a notable gap in full remittance.
In May, the Federal Government issued a mandate to system operators in the Nigerian power industry, directing them to supply no more than 6 percent of total available grid generation per hour to international customers or off-takers.
Recently, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) issued a directive to electricity generation companies, criticising the prioritisation of international customers while limiting offtake by distribution companies (Discos) during grid imbalances. NERC described this practice as both inefficient and unfair.
This new directive states that electricity generation companies must allocate no more than 10 percent of their generation capacity to international off-takers for the next six months.
