THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has confirmed improvement in the number of metered electricity consumers by 6.8 per cent in five years.
The NBS, in its Electricity report for 2015 – 2019, said the number of metered customers increased consecutively on a year-on-year basis from 3.85 million in 2015 to 3.80 million in 2019.
The figure, however, fell to 3.51 million in 2020.
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The report stated, “In 2015, the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) recorded the highest number, while the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) stood top between 2016 and 2019. The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) recorded the highest in 2020.”
The report also noted that the estimated customer records again showed year-on-year positive growth rates consecutively.
It said, “By definition, estimated customers do not own meters but are supplied electricity and billed. The number of estimated customers in 2015 was 3.85 million, and 4.19 million in 2016.
“In 2017, it rose by 4.28 per cent when 4.37 million customers were recorded. It further increased to 5.05 million in 2018 and grew by 14.08 per cent in 2019 when 5.76 million customers were recorded. Yet, this positive trend continued in 2020 with estimated customers of 6.86 million.”
In a related development, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) chairman, Sanusi Garba, in his press conference with newsmen in April this year, said the Commission had put in place a mechanism to prevent outrageous estimated billing of customers.
The mechanism, Garba said, would be effected by using an average three months consumption of metered customers on each feeder, the maximum allowed energy consumption estimates to be computed for each customer category.
The Commission had reported in its 2022 first quarter report that only 40.95 per cent of electricity customers had been metered, a situation he said posed a key challenge to the industry.
The NERC explained that out of every 10 registered electricity customers, six were still on estimated billing, a situation it said had contributed to apathy towards bills payment by customers on estimated billing.
The regulator said that for each class of customers on a feeder, an energy estimation cap had been established to guide the discos and, thus, protect unmetered customers from being overcharged while waiting for appropriate metering.
Harrison Edeh is a journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, always determined to drive advocacy for good governance through holding public officials and businesses accountable.