Tackling Nigeria’s...
Continued from page 10 which only 3.39million are metered, leaving the unmetered population at 4.09 million customers.
One of the biggest scourges of Nigeria’s electricity deficit is the estimated billing of unmetered customers, wherein consumers are charged for energy consumed based on their previous usage, without considering the actual quantity of energy consumed. Consumers in this system are bedeviled with mandatory payments far above their monthly energy consumption, which has often led to disputes between customers and DisCos personnel.
In a bid to assuage the agitation by electricity customers to be metered so as to enable them pay for actual power consumed, the Federal Government introduced the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) Regulation in 2018, which provides for the supply, installation, and maintenance of end-meter users by other parties approved by the commission. The initiative was geared towards accelerating the closure of the existing meter gap, which has stymied the development and progress of meter services in the industry. More recently, in a renewed attempt to bridge the metering gap, curtail the prevalence of estimated billing and attract private investment in the provision of meters and metering services in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), the Federal Government introduced
to revisit the tariff issues, review the Multi-year Tariff Order (MYTO) to be userfriendly, and adopt a truly
cost-reflective tariff that can guarantee a bankable investment climate. the National Mass Metering Policy (NMMP) in 2020, which will be executed in two phases, including phases 0 and 1. Phase 0, which commenced last year involves the financing of orders under the MAP programme by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), with a target of one million meters across the country while Phase 1 will provide up to 4 million meters and shall also use a similar financing mechanism as Phase 0. Following the operational modalities of the CBN’s financing support to the electricity distribution companies and local meter manufacturers in Nigeria, all unmetered customers are expected to be metered by end of 2023under the NMMP/ MAP schemes, ultimately eliminating the meter gap.