The Federal Government and the states have raised N100bn for the procurement of prepaid electricity meters.
Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said this was under the Presidential Meter Initiative programme.
Adelabu disclosed this while addressing broadcasters in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, which was monitored by our correspondent.
According to him, President Bola Tinubu’s administration has been making efforts to close the meter gap in Nigeria, adopting various initiatives.
He mentioned that many customers are not paying their bills because they believe they are being cheated by the power distribution companies through estimated billing, stressing that metering would ensure transparency.
“Out of over the 12 million electricity customers we have in Nigeria, only a little over five million is metered. We have over seven million meter gap today, and these are self-inflicted problems,” Adelabu explained.
Speaking about the efforts of the government to close the meter gap, he explained, “Mr President has set up what we call the Presidential Meter Initiative and set up a Presidential Meeting Council to address this issue. He made me the chairman of this council. The SA on Energy to Mr President is the secretary of the council. The mandate we have was to procure and install a minimum of two million meters on a yearly basis over the next five years.
“In the PMI, we have made good progress in sourcing the fund for this, and it is going to be by a combination of the federal and state governments. Today, we have received and we have seen about N100bn that will go into the procurement of meters.”
He added that the World Bank decided to support Nigeria with the procurement of almost two million meters in the next two years through the distribution sector recovery programme.
He disclosed that $200m out of the $500m DISREP fund would be used for meter procurement, saying this has reached an advanced stage.
“In fact, for the World Bank, we have issued contract awards. It’s just for them to start bringing the meters from overseas and locally. Because of the capacity requirements, we cannot just depend on local patronage alone. We must bring it from other clients where it’s even cheaper. Even our assemblers are bringing the parts, which are the SKDs or the CKDs, (completely knocked down parts or semi-knocked down parts). Then we also encourage our local manufacturers.
“So it’s a combination of international competitive bidding and national competitive bidding. Before the end of the year, they will start bringing the meters in,” he posited.
He added that the sale of meters has been liberalised by allowing the DisCos to allow their customers to buy directly from the vendors.
He also acknowledged that the cost of meters has risen because of the exchange rates.
“The meter that was going for N80,000 before probably is about N120,000 now. That’s the reality. What now matters most is the funding of this,” he noted.