Four million Nigerians do not have electricity meters, says NBS

About 4.1 million of the 7.5 million that have access to electricity in the country are yet to be metered by the Distribution Companies as at the last quarter of December 2017, according to latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

In its Power Sector Report: Energy Generated and Sent Out and Consumed and Load Allocation, the NBS said the only 46.16 percent of the total electricity consumers are captured to have been metered, leaving more than half of them unmetered.

The report shows that the Benin disco had the highest percentage of metered customers of 69 percent of the electricity users in the state, followed by Eko disco with 60.73 percent and Ikeja Disco with 55.95 perdcent respectively while Yola and Enugu Discos recorded the least percentage of customers metered with 23.61 percent and 27.72 percent recorded respectively.

Following inability of the Discos to meter their customers, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Tunde Fashola, last November directed the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, to roll out regulations that would ensure the consumers are usually extorted by through estimated bills get their prepaid meters which had become a thorny issue in the country struggling with highly irregular power supply.

But just last month, the NERC commenced a process that would see the engaging of Meter Assets Providers (MAP), as third parties to take over the metering project since the Discos have failed in this responsibility even after collecting money from their consumers.

The Discos are said to be kicking against NERC’s proposed third party metering option, citing they could face some losses and are asking the regulator to allow them charge some form of meter maintenance fee.

Further break down of the NBS report shows that the Benin disco had a total number of 535,935 metered customers from 771,226 electricity users, Abuja Disco had 450,044 metered customers from 862,696 electricity users, Eko disco had had 442,201 electricity users with 268,558 metered customers, Enugu had 224,444 metered customers from 809,829 electricity users, Kano had 162,664 metered customers from a total of 472,453 electricity users, Port Harcourt had 237,188 metered customers from 488,600 electricity users and Yola had 69,282 metered customers from 293,473 electricity users.

The daily energy generation attained a peak of 105,152 MWh on the 8th of December 2017 with thermal stations generating 84,026 MWh while the hydro stations generated 21, 126 MWh and total average of 94,627 MWh of energy generated daily by power stations during the period.

However, the report indicated that the lowest energy generated in the quarter was 73,246 MWh as against the previous quarter of 56,486 MWh generated daily, this figure was attained in October 2017, as thermal stations generated 55,941 MWh while the hydro stations generated the 17,305 MWh.

 

CYNTHIA EGBOBOH, ABUJA