Fast track the roll-out of prepayment meters

To address key post-privatisation issues affecting the power and metering industries, including the 6.4 million shortfalls of prepaid meter units in Nigeria the federal government set up a standing committee, headed by the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Power Godknows Igali, to be assisted by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) and Bureau of Public Enterprises. The committee was tasked with developing a robust framework for monitoring the activities of all players in the country’s unbundled electricity market and ensuring that the 11 distribution companies comply with the terms of their purchase agreements, including a provision to install meters to every home and business in the next five years.

Consequently, the report that the  Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company (IKEDC) has unveiled  plans to roll out about 500,000 electricity pre-paid meters to customers who are presently being billed without meters through estimation, in the next three years is a cheery news. According to the report, the Managing Director of the firm, Mr Abiodun Ajifowobaje, who disclosed this during the inspections of the management team to the company’s customer’s forum interaction meeting held in 15-business district units of IKEDC also stated that plan has been concluded to ensure effective metering of customers within the network, adding that official roll out of the meters will kick start before December. Furthermore, he stated that customers with obsolete and malfunctioning meters would also have them replaced, adding that the company had made significant progress in its quest to ensure a robust metering system that would enhance accuracy in billing.

We note that Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief when the pre-paid meter was introduced; and it was expected that the epileptic system of power supply and outrageous billing system will be a thing of the past with the conclusion of the privatisation process. Nigerians were further pleased when it was disclosed that government will distribute pre-paid meters free to consumers of electricity in the country to ensure accurate billings both for domestic and industrial consumption. However, several months after there have been no serious effort to actualise this aspiration.

The prepayment meters for the DISCOs will increase revenue; reduce the overhead that usually characterize house-to-house recovery of revenue as was the case in the past; reduce corruption; enable them to determine the actual energy demand in Nigeria, because most of consumers will now be conscious of the amount of energy consumed; as well as increase customer trust. To energy consumers benefits include fair billing as they will only pay for actual energy consumed; consumers can control their energy consumption; cases of meter theft would be reduced, because each prepayment meter is tied to a smartcard, which means that a stolen prepayment meter will be useless without the smart card and since every prepayment meter has a unique identification number that can be tracked electronically, consumers can be sure of meter security.

We believe that the issues of quantum of energy received from national grid and effective metering of customers should be addressed simultaneously; hence, as  part of the effort towards ensuring the sustainability of the reform agenda, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) should develop a framework to fast track the roll-out of prepayment meters across the country. The prevalent case of estimated billing should be a thing of the past by now and consumers should only pay for the electricity they consume.