The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu has announced that the federal government and states have raised N100 billion for the procurement of prepaid electricity metres.
He made this announcement on Tuesday during a press briefing in Ibadan, Oyo state.
He mentioned that the FG had come up with the new initiative to close the metering gap. He said:
“Mr President has set up what we call the presidential metre initiative (PMI) 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 metres every year 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 seen about N100bn fund that will go into the procurement of metres.”
The minister also added that the World Bank decided to support Nigeria with the procurement of almost two million metres in the next two years through the distribution sector recovery programme. This programme granted a $500 million loan, of which $200 million would be used for metre procurement.
In addition, Adelabu said that due to the rising cost of metre procurement, electricity consumers can get free prepaid metres and can pay within 10 years.
“When the government starts procuring metres, we’ll give it to the customers, and we’ll deduct the money over 10 years. In which case, you will not even feel it at all,” He said.
Adelabu further explained the charges that would be incurred by the consumers on the metre which would be deducted from their unit purchase. He said:
“Probably, if you buy a credit of N5,000, maybe N100 will go into the metre that we have given you. So, that’s what we are trying to do. We bring these metres in and reduce the gap that we have in the metres.”
The minister also complained about customers not using metres and refusing to pay their electricity bills because they believe they are being cheated by the electricity distributing companies through estimated billing. As such 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 a seven million metre gap today, and these are self-inflicted problems,” he said.
Adelabu added that the sale of metres has been liberalised by allowing customers to buy directly from the vendors and not just the electricity distributing companies (DisCos).
It is unclear the amount the metres would cost, the payment plan involved and if the 100 naira being deducted from each purchase of the unit is charged as a tax or payment for the loaned metre.
