By Chris Ochayi

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has embarked on a public consultation and fact finding mission on the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation, CAPMI.

This metering scheme allows people that have billing estimation issues or high billing issues to come forward and pay in advance for meters and the cost will be deducted from their monthly fixed charge bills.

The scheme, it was gathered, was for a willing customer to pay for a meter which otherwise would have been provided by the service provider but this is not the case due to certain challenges and transition the sector is going through, hence, the service providers have not be able to meet this obligation. It is on this premise, according to NERC that the public consultation is necessary to create awareness on the CAPMI scheme

Speaking at the public consultation forum in Port Harcourt, the representative of the Commission’s Chairman, Dr Abba Ibrahim said that over 50 percent of electricity consumers were not metered and therefore subjected to what he called estimated billings, popularly known as crazy billings in Nigeria.

“CAPMI which came into effect through NERC Order 05 in 2013 is a stop-gap measure to ensure that people have meters. A lot of people have and are still complaining on the crazy billing otherwise known as estimated billing.” Hence, NERC in consultation with other stakeholders came up with the scheme called CAPMI to mitigate their sufferings,” he stated.