Tackling Nigeria’s energy crisis requires more access to meters

WITH A POP ULATION of over 200 million people, Nigeria is undoubtedly one of the most populous countries in the world, accounting for half of the population of West Africa. While the country has the largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, with agriculture being the largest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), access to electricity is faced with a myriad of challenges, including infrastructure constraints, insufficient enduser tariffs, unstable supply, among others.

In a bid to tackle these challenges and promote efficiency in the area of operations in the power industry, the Nigerian government unbundled the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2013 and privatized the generation and distribution segments of the sector. With the privatization, 11 distribution companies (DisCos) and 6 generation companies (GenCos) were birthed, while the transmission of electricity remained under the control of the Federal Government.

While the privatization initially held promises, efficiency in the power sector is still being hamstrung by pertinent issues to date, such as unreliable gas supply, vandalism and insufficient metering. According to a report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the population of electricity customers stands at 7.48 million, of

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