44.4% of Nigeria’s Registered Electricity Consumers Have Prepaid Meters

By Adedapo Adesanya 

The total number of installed prepaid meters in the country currently stands at 5,842,726 out of 13,162,572 registered electricity customers, indicating that only 44.4 per cent of electricity users have these meters.

Data released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) showed that in the fourth quarter of 2023, eleven Distribution Companies (DisCos) installed only 111,225 meters to customers across the country.

While Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) has the highest percentage of installed prepaid meters at 73 per cent of its 898,000 customers, Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) has metered 61 per cent of its 856,000 registered customers.

Yola Electricity Distribution Company has metered only 15 per cent of its 124,000 customers, Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company (KAEDC) and Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDC) have metered only 24 per cent each of its 206,000 and 210,000 registered customers.

Meanwhile, the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC), Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) and Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) installed the highest number of prepaid electricity meters in Q4 2023; while KEDC, YEDC and EEDC installed the least number of meters in the period under review.

NERC introduced the Credit Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI) after the 2013 privatisation exercise as a way of closing the metering gap in the power sector.

The scheme, however, failed as most consumers who paid did not get metered due to funds being trapped in an escrow account.

As a result, the Meter Asset Providers (MAPs) was introduced and just like CAPMI, with its many challenges, the MAPs’ meter rollout was slow-paced due to funding issues, prompting an intervention by the federal government with the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP), still with little or no changes.

The 11 electricity distribution companies have distributed less than 6 million meters under the MAPs.