Ikeja Electric (IE) has sustained its top ranking in meter supply to electricity consumers in the country in the first quarter of this year, meeting about 73% of the customers’ requests.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, (NERC) in its latest data on meter distribution during the quarter reported that a total of 179,792 meters were installed by the 11 Electricity Distribution Companies, (DisCos).
The commission disclosed that while Ikeja Electric installed meters for 73% of its customers while Abuja DisCo installed 61% for its customers and Eko DisCo installed 59% of the customers’ demand.
The NERC’s data showed that there were 13.37 million registered electricity consumers as at the end of March, 2024.
Out of this figure, only 5.989 million have meters, representing 44.78%, reflecting a deficit of some 7.4 million meters in the Nigerian Electricity Market.
The Q3 2024 data on meter supply for electricity consumers represented a 5% increase when compared to 171,107 installed in the same period last year.
A breakdown of meter installations in the first three months of this year showed that 56,994 meters were installed in March while 79,837 and 42,961 meters were installed in February and January respectively.
It would be recalled that the Minister of Power, Mr.Adebayo Adelabu, recently hinted of the new options being considered by the Federal Government to achieve its mass metering initiative based on timeline it had set for the initiative.
For instance, one of the considerations is to mop up available meters assembled in-country and incentivize indigenous meter manufacturers to enhance their production capacities to meet demand structure of the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI).
The Minister said President Bola Tinubu had ordered that Nigeria’s import dependency on meters would be significantly minimized by the initiative before it would eventually be ended.
Adelabu, who gave these highlights of the the PMI during his working visit and inspection tour of Mojec Group, a major stakeholder in the power sector, said in addition to repositioning the meter production sector, a new Bill to promote local content implementation in the power sector is being perfected for consideration by the National Assembly.
