The second phase or Phase 1 of the national mass metering programe, which would see the distribution of four million free prepaid meters to electricity consumers across the country, is set to commence from July this year.
Special adviser to the president on infrastructure, Ahmad Rufai Zakari, who made this known to newsmen, said government would wrap up the distribution of its initial one million meters, which he labelled phase zero by July, and plans to kick-start the distribution of four million meters shortly afterwards.
Giving an update on the Phase Zero, which is currently ongoing, Zakari said that over 400,000 meters have already being installed and more than 600,000 meters have already been delivered to distribution companies for installation and on completion, would mark the end of the current phase.
However, he lamented that installation has been slow due to inadequate personnel. “Although we have more than 600,000 delivered to the distribution companies, installations are lagging behind the deliveries. We should meter up and then conclude the first one million by end of July.”
“The challenges we saw were with the trained personnel for the installation. Many of the providers have had to hire more personnel, they have never installed this much meters in this amount of time and then with Covid-19, there were some supply constraints as well but then we’ve gotten past those and we are confident that come end of July we should close Phase zero and launch Phase 1” he said.
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The national mass metering programme is an initiative of the federal government and electricity distribution companies (DisCos), in collaboration with local meter manufacturers, to provide smart prepaid meters to all unmetered customers.
It is expected that six million smart prepaid meters would have been distributed to electricity consumers by the end of the exercise which the federal government said it would conclude by 2023.
As far as inadequate metering is concerned, DisCos over time, have used this situation to their advantage via estimated billings. It appears that fully metering customers are currently being viewed as a disincentive, given that estimated bills can easily be manipulated.
A report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), shows that only 4,234,759 (40.27 per cent) of the total customer population of 10,516,090 were metered as of 30 June 2020. Clearly, this validates the widely held view that there are a wide number of customers on estimated billing which gives room for illegal connection to the networks and in turn corrupt practices.
NERC further revealed that only three out of 11 electricity distribution companies in the country had metered more than 50 per cent of electricity customers under their coverage areas as of June 2020.
