Prepaid electricity meters are to be purchased with N100 billion raised by the federal government and the states.
Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said this was under the Presidential Meter Initiative programme.
He claims that by implementing a number of initiatives, the administration of President Bola Tinubu has been working to close the meter gap in Nigeria.
He emphasized that metering would ensure transparency and mentioned that many customers are not paying their bills because they feel they are being taken advantage of by the power distribution companies through estimated billing.
“Out of over the 12 million electricity customers we have in Nigeria, only a little over five million is metered. We have over seven million meter gap today, and these are self-inflicted problems,” Adelabu explained.
He clarified, “Mr. President has set up what we call the Presidential Meter Initiative and set up a Presidential Meeting Council to address this issue,” in reference to the government’s efforts to close the meter gap. He made me the chairman of this council. The SA on Energy to Mr President is the secretary of the council. Our mandate for the next five years was to acquire and install two million meters or more annually.
“In the PMI, we have made good progress in sourcing the fund for this, and it is going to be by a combination of the federal and state governments. Today, we have received and we have seen about N100bn that will go into the procurement of meters.”
He added that the World Bank decided to support Nigeria with the procurement of almost two million meters in the next two years through the distribution sector recovery programme.
He disclosed that $200m out of the $500m DISREP fund would be used for meter procurement, saying this has reached an advanced stage.
“In fact, for the World Bank, we have issued contract awards. It’s just for them to start bringing the meters from overseas and locally. Because of the capacity requirements, we cannot just depend on local patronage alone. We must bring it from other clients where it’s even cheaper. Even our assemblers are bringing the parts, which are the SKDs or the CKDs, (completely knocked down parts or semi-knocked down parts). Then we also encourage our local manufacturers.
“So it’s a combination of international competitive bidding and national competitive bidding. Before the end of the year, they will start bringing the meters in,” he posited.
He continued by saying that the DisCos’ decision to let their clients purchase straight from the vendors has liberalized the market for meters.
He also acknowledged that the cost of meters has risen because of the exchange rates.
“The meter that was going for N80,000 before probably is about N120,000 now. That’s the reality. What now matters most is the funding of this,” he noted.
Published by Ejoh Caleb
