The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has said in its latest report that metering gap has widened with over 7 million unmetered customers.
It the 2023 second quarter report, the commission said as of June 30, 2023, there were 12,561,049 registered electricity customers with 44.16 per cent (5,546,483) of them metered leaving 55.84 per cent (7,014,566) of customers unmetered.
A further analysis of the report showed that in the second quarter of the year, 2023, 178,864 end-user customers were metered, which increased the metering rate by 0.85 percentage points relative to the 43.31 per cent recorded in 2023/Q1 with a two per cent change in metering rate by the DisCos.
The report also revealed that the Ikeja, Ibadan, Abuja and Enugu DisCos had the highest number of meter installations in 2023/Q2 accounting for 72.69 per cent of total installations.
“Relative to 2023/Q1, eight DisCos recorded improvements in the number of meter installations with Benin (+28.40 per cent), Kano (+25.99 per cent), and Eko (+15.85 per cent) recording the greatest improvements. Conversely, Yola (-24.55 per cent), Kaduna (-6.27 per cent), and Enugu (-2.83 per cent) recorded a decline in the number of meters installed compared to 2023/Q1,” it stated.
The NERC report further stated that out of the 178,864 end-use customers metered in 2023/Q2, 94.15 per cent customers were metered under the meter asset provider (MAP) framework, 5.20 per cent were metered under the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) framework, 0.64 per cent under the Vendor Financed, and 0.01per cent under the DisCo Financed framework.
On the metering progress under nmmp, map, Vendor and DisCo finance, the report stated that under MAP framework, a total of 168,397 meters were installed in 2023/Q2 representing a 5.92 per cent increase compared to the 158,992 MAP meter installations recorded in 2023/Q1 as Ikeja DisCo recorded the highest number of installations (47,080) representing 27.96 per cent of the total number of customers metered under the framework during the quarter, noting that Yola DisCo did not record any installation under the framework in 2023/Q2.
The report revealed that Abuja, Ibadan, Ikeja, and Port Harcourt DisCos have exhausted their meter allocations under the NMMP Phase 0. It further stated that there was no change in the number of meter installations by Benin, Enugu, and Kano DisCos while Eko, Ibadan, Jos, Kaduna and Yola DisCos reported a decrease in customer metering under the NMMP in 2023/Q2 compared to 2023/Q1, noting that the decrease was due to the winding down of NMMP Phase 0.
