Meter: Why Discos don’t patronise local manufacturers – expert

Atilade Bolarinwa, vice chairman of Unistar Hi-teck System, an indigenous meter manufacturing firm, has linked the failure of the Electricity Distribution Companies (Discos) to patronise local meters manufacturers, in spite of huge demand by electricity consumers, to the absence of credit facility and the influence of foreign technical partners. 

As Nigeria’s power situation worsens, with less than 2,000 megawatt, small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly sliding into tense operations, spending more than 70 of their revenue on power, with negative impact on their bottom-line and labour sustenance. 

Mukaila Adeosun, chairman, Yaba Industrial Estate, told BusinessDay that businesses within the estate were struggling to stay afloat due basically to high cost of operations. Specifically, he listed power and finance as the major constraints, noting that over 70 percent of their revenue was spent on power generation and maintenance of generating sets, a development he said limited the potential of the SMEs to create jobs. 

However, Bolarinwa explained that indigenous meter manufacturers did not give credit facilities to Discos as a result of the hostile Nigerian business environment.

The manufacturer, however, said the Discos get credit facilities from foreign countries, while local manufacturers refused to grant them such facility.

“Also, most of the distribution companies have technical partners, which may be Korean or Indian, and who use their influence to get meters for them. The technical partners want the meters from their countries to be in Nigerian markets and will bend over backwards to ensure this,’’ Bolarinwa alleged.

He said the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had given the sector two means of financing of meters for installation — the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation (CAPMI) and DISCOs finance.

“As at the last count, CAPMI finance has done 62 per cent of adding to metering while DISCO finance hit 38 per cent. It is on record that CAPMI finance in which consumers pay in advance for meters is what is really financing metering and not DISCO financing.

“Outside these two areas, I don’t know if there is any other ulterior motive. If you remove these two, they have no reason not to patronise us,’’ the local manufacturer said.

The vice chairman also pointed to corruption in Nigeria and urged the Federal Government to sanitise all sectors of the economy.

 “Nigerians are corrupt and everybody knows. Our judiciary system is not helping matters. If somebody misbehaves, he can subvert the law. Either the judge or lawyer will help him to postpone or frustrate judgment. In that situation, there is a limit to what you can do,’’ Bolarinwa said.

He regretted that some consumers preferred not to use prepaid meters because they were used to settling the distribution companies staff every month when their bills were brought.