By Femi Bolaji

Energy expert Canice Emeka has warned that energy theft is a “silent cancer” steadily undermining Nigeria’s power sector, resulting in massive revenue losses and worsening electricity supply across the country.

Emeka shared the concerns in a widely circulated LinkedIn post, noting that investigations show a significant portion of electricity generated in Nigeria is either stolen, bypassed or never billed to consumers.

He attributed the trend to systemic failures within the power value chain, stressing that the losses could be drastically reduced if existing loopholes are effectively blocked.

According to him, cutting Nigeria’s average Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses from about 45 per cent to 20 per cent—a benchmark few distribution companies (DisCos) consistently achieve—could unlock between ₦1 trillion and ₦1.5 trillion in additional annual revenue without generating a single extra megawatt of power.

He said the recovered revenue would be sufficient to fund 10,000 megawatts of new power plants, close the national metering gap and still enable lower electricity tariffs for compliant consumers.

Drawing from field experience, Emeka identified four major categories of energy theft: meter bypassing, meter tampering and illegal connections; collusion between customers and utility staff; vandalism of distribution infrastructure for the resale of copper and aluminium; and fraudulent load declarations by large industrial consumers.

He said the most effective countermeasure so far has been the deployment of comprehensive smart metering systems with remote disconnection capability.

“When a meter detects tampering, the system flags it in real time, sends photographic evidence of the incident and automatically disconnects the customer,” he explained.

Emeka added that during a period of meter scarcity, a vendor-financed metering model was adopted, which required no upfront funding from the distribution company and significantly reduced the metering gap and commercial losses.

He also cited successes recorded in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, where Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping of the electricity network and feeder-level energy accounting enabled operators to pinpoint theft locations.

“By measuring how much energy entered each 11kV feeder against what was paid for, we identified theft hotspots. Targeted enforcement recovered over ₦1 billion within five months,” he said.

Emeka called on the Federal Government to go beyond civil penalties by explicitly criminalising energy theft and establishing special courts for speedy prosecution of offenders.

He also urged regulators to consider the creation of an Anti-Theft Fund to incentivise aggressive enforcement and strengthen efforts to curb electricity theft nationwide.