By Chris Ochayi

Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has given the distribution companies, Discos, two weeks within which to provide electricity consumers whose meters are yet to be delivered months after payment with the products.

The Chairman of NERC, Dr. Sam Amadi, gave the ultimatum during a meeting with electricity distribution companies and stakeholders on Aggregate Technical Commercial and Collection loss studies, last week in Abuja.

He said the Commission will view very seriously failure to meter these consumers.

According to him, “By this week, we are sending letters to all the Discos. The Commissioner for Consumer Affairs is already preparing the letters. We will give Discos two weeks to make sure they fully meter all those who have paid because the order of the commission is 45 days. After that two weeks, we will be conducting public hearings to ascertain whether all those who have paid for CAPMI meters have been metered.

“And the Commission will view very seriously failure to meter these consumers. So I want to assure those of you writing to us with complaints that they have paid for CAPMI meters in the last three, four months that we will ensure in the coming weeks that those who have not been metered are properly metered. And Discos that have not metered their consumers who paid for those meters themselves will be sanctioned,” he said.

He assured all customers who have written complaints to the Commission regarding the issue of metering that their case would be pursued to logical conclusion.

At an earlier occasion, NERC had explained that it was working hard to make sure that Discos provided meters for their customers, as the metering gap in the country was huge.

Amadi, was speaking on the sidelines of an event in Abuja when he said, “Our expectation is that metering will increase, but let us be very careful. The metering gap in Nigeria is about 50 per cent and we don’t expect that gap to be closed in a short while. What we expect to see is significant and consistent effort by the distribution companies to keep metering their customers.

“Of course the gap can close quickly if increase in capacity results in increase in revenue, and the regulator will benchmark that increase in revenue. But we expect to see continuous and good effort by the Discos to meter their consumers and quickly close down the gap. But the gap will still be there for some time because it is a huge gap.”

On the methodology employed by the Discos in billing non-metered consumers, Amadi said the commission had educated the power firms on how to go about it properly.

He said, “We worked them through the methodology and this is because some of them are new in the sector. By this methodology, before the Discos estimate your bill, they would have looked at the energy supply in that cluster.

“They would have looked at the metered customers in that cluster and be able to have a much more accurate estimation. What is going on now in some cases is not estimation, it is just arbitrary way of tariff and we have expressed a very strong disapproval on that.”