NERC moves to legalize illegal billing, experts allege

Experts in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) have argued that the move by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to place a cap on estimated billing by the nation’s electricity distribution companies (Discos) is illegal and inconsistent with provisions of the Nigeria Electric Power Sector Reform Act (NEPSRA 2005).
In objection to NERC’s proposition, Abimbola Odubiyi, director of regulatory and stakeholders affairs at the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC), said it will only amount the legalization of illegality.
According to him, most of the prepaid meters installed in consumers’ premises have been by-passed and compromised, resulting in gross revenue leakages, and that NERC’s implementation of its new proposal could only amount to double payment for the Discos.
In the same vein, Reuben Okoye, assistant general manager, regulatory affairs, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), said that NERC had taken a wrong step, as EEDC gets on 10 percent of expected revenue from metered customers, since meters there are massively cloned, with one meter number being replicated several times.
Okoye further noted that capping of estimated billing will increase commercial losses for Discos, entrench discrimination between metered and unmetered customers, and induce the deliberate damage of meters by certain persons in order to be placed on estimated billing.
According to him, various Discos have acquired smart meters and are only buying time for NERC to ratify their metering modification plans before a massive roll-out of the meters.
Condition 41(2) of the Discos license terms and conditions stipulates that “operational meters should first be installed before connection, while Section 1 of the regulation on connection and disconnection procedures stipulates that “a distribution company shall fit meter and connect electricity supply in line with the Commission’s customer service standards of performance.
However, according to NERC, about 44.06 percent of all registered customers in the NESI are not effectively metered, and several approaches previously taken by the Commission to address the metering gap have not yielding any significant results. The total number of metered customers in Nigeria is just 5,242,714.
Data released by NERC shows that the Kano Electricity Distribution Company has the highest number of metered customers at 66.90 percent, while the Benin Electricity Distribution Company has the lowest number of metered customers at 23.06 percent.
Other Discos with various levels of metered customers are Abuja (55%), Eko (51.82%), Enugu (33.20%), Ibadan (43.91%), Ikeja 37.90%) and Jos (39.86%). Apart from these, the Kaduna Disco has 65.02 percent of metered customers, with Port Harcourt having 52.74 per