Only 6 million Nigerians are metered – Fashola
Babatunde Fashola, minister of power, works and housing, has said that only 6 million Nigerians are metered, indicating that a huge number of people are using electricity illegally. The minister said after a meeting with operators in the electricity sector in Kano.
“Today, the records show that only 6 million people are using power. That can’t be correct. So, there are a lot of people using power who are hiding, they must come out. We must identify them. We are hoping that we can do this during the next census exercise, so that if we know how many we are then we can determine how much power you need a day and then we can produce that power and reduce redundancy.”
The minister said this had hampered efforts to know exactly the electricity needs of the country and plan for events like redundancy required for maintenance of power assets.
In April, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) released data indicating that about 2.9 million registered electricity customers under the 11 distribution companies were yet to be provided meters, stressing that 50 percent of electricity consumers were without meters.
A breakdown of the data showed that DISCOs operating in the Northern part of the country that include Abuja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano and Yola, together claimed to having a combined total customer base of 1,973,664 million; Port Harcourt, Benin and Enugu DISCOs only have 1,863,708 customers, while in the West, Eko, Ikeja and Ibadan DISCOs have a total of 2,322,376 customer base.
“A lot but gaps still exist in the regulatory function for which it needs to do more to make sure these things are checked. Consumers should be billed for energy they consume, it should be scientific, not at the discretion of the DISCOs to the disadvantage of the consumer,” Kunle Kola Olubiyo, president, Nigeria Consumers Protection Network, said.
In a chat with journalists after the meeting, the minster said Nigeria’s 23 gas power plants had been plagued by inadequate supply of gas hence the country was now relying on hydropower.