By Danmaryam Zayamu
About 5.8 million electricity consumers in Nigeria are yet to be captured under the pre-paid meter scheme, the 2019 third-quarter report released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), has disclosed.
This is even as plans have been concluded to introduce a new and higher electricity tariff next month.
This figure represents 59.7 percent of the total registered electricity consumers in the country.
“The metering gap for end-use customers is still a key challenge in the industry. The records of the commission indicate that, of the 9,674,729 registered electricity customers, only 3,895,497 (40.26 percent) have been metered as at the end of the third quarter of 2019.
“Thus, 59.74 percent of the registered electricity customers are still on estimated billing which has contributed to customer apathy towards payment for electricity.
“In comparison to the second quarter, the numbers of registered and metered customers increased by 8.93 percent and 1.65 percent respectively.
“The increase in registered customer population is due to the on-going customer enumeration exercise by DISCOs through which illegal consumers of electricity were brought unto the DISCOs’ billing platform,” NERC said.
