Nigeria’s electricity sector recorded a revenue shortfall of about N1.36 trillion last year due to failure of electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to efficiently bill consumers for electricity consumption worth about N694.8bn as well as their inability to collect about N669.5bn from bills served the consumers on power supplied to them, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has reported.
The losses, which were contained in commission’s just published 2025 Annual Report, showed that the 11 DisCos supplied electricity valued at N3.68tn in the year under review but billed customers for only N2.99tn, indicating a gross billing efficiency of 81.14 per cent.
According to the report, this implies that electricity worth about N694.8bn supplied to consumers was not billed and that of the N2.99tn billed, the DisCos collected only N2.32tn, leaving N669.49bn outstanding.
NERC stated, “The total billing to electricity consumers by the DisCos was N2.99tn, but only N2.32tn was collected, translating to a collection efficiency of 77.60 per cent.”
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During the year under review, the commission also reported that DisCos received 31,251.77 gigawatt-hours of electricity at their trading points but billed customers for only 25,867.86GWh, reflecting an energy accounting efficiency of 82.77 per cent.
The report showed that Ibadan DisCo recorded the highest energy accounting efficiency at 88.84 per cent, compared to Enugu’s 72.18 per cent, which was the lowest accounting efficiency for the year.
In addition, the NERC report’s data showed that the weighted average aggregate technical, commercial and collection loss across the DisCos stood at 37.03 per cent in 2025.
The data comprised 18.86 per cent technical and commercial losses and 22.40 per cent collection losses and was 16.49 percentage points above the 20.54 per cent target under the 2025 Multi-Year Tariff Order.
The NERC’s latest report indicated that the number of active registered electricity customers at 12.16 million as of December 2025, with 6.97 million, or 57.27 per cent, metered while 5.20 million customers or 42.73 per cent of the total consumers were unmetered.
The commission further reported that Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company and the market operator issued gross invoices of N1.72tn to the DisCos in 2025 for energy costs and administrative services, but that the DisCos remitted N1.632tn, indicating a market shortfall of N89.58bn.
On tariff subsidies in the sector in 2025, it reported that the Federal Government incurred a subsidy obligation of N1.93tn in 2025 or 57.44 per cent of the total N3.357tn NBET invoice for the year.
It attributed the subsidies largely to the FGN’s policy to freeze allowed tariffs paid by customers despite the increase in cost-reflective tariffs.
The NERC reported that two grid collapse incidents were recorded in 2025, comprising one full collapse and one partial collapse and clarified that the full collapse occurred on September 10, 2025, while the partial collapse on December 29 due to the failure of the Benin-Onitsha 330kV line’s one circuit breaker at the Benin transmission station.
