• Say less than 50% of Nigerians metered
Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, and MBH Power, have reaffirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to addressing the over seven million metering gaps amid ongoing concerns about the country’s epileptic electricity supply, which has been attributed to aged and weak infrastructure.
Adelabu made the promise during his inspection tour of MBH Power Limited’s facility in Shagamu, Ogun State, noting that Nigerians had endured years of unreliable electricity supply due to the aged and weak power infrastructure across the sector’s value chain.
“We have aged infrastructure across all segments. Power lines are weak; the transformers are old; the towers have fallen, and we have not replaced this infrastructure as expected, to be able to support an improvement in power supply over time. This has accumulated for too long and that is what is responsible for the epileptic supply that we have seen and have subjected Nigerians to, over time,” he said.
The minister added that beyond the critical issues of poor legislation and policies that had bedeviled the sector for many years, aged and weak infrastructure was another major challenge facing the sector, which had been neglected over time.
Adelabu emphasised that bridging the metering gap was a top priority for the government as efforts were being intensified to accelerate the deployment of meters across the country, with partnerships being forged with key stakeholders and international bodies.
The minister, who identified that poor liquidity had been identified as the major challenge for a smooth sector, emphasised that the foundation of the liquidity issue was metering, which engenders collections of distribution companies (Discos) bills to customers.
Adelabu described metering as key to the growth and sustainability of the Nigeria electricity market, noting that bridging the metering gap would significantly reduce instances of estimated billing, providing consumers with more accurate and fair electricity charges.
“Less than 50 per cent of electricity consumers nationwide is metered and it’s been like that for so long. President Tinubu said we need to reverse this ugly trend and we must make sure that we get every household, every business, every institution, every industry metered over the next four to five years, which is why we said, the meter gap that we have, which is almost eight million meters, must be reduced significantly in the short to medium term and eliminated completely in the long-term.”
“Through the Presidential Metering Initiative, being managed by the Presidential Metering Council, of which I’m the Chairman, we have a target to ensure that we install a minimum of two million meters annually over the next four to five years. So we are also supported by our international development partner, the World Bank, under the Nigeria Distribution Sector Recovery Programme (DISREP) to support the sectoral metering initiative with almost two million meters to be procured under the programme,” he said.
