Electric meter manufacturers’ high stake gamble 

Nigeria’s electricity power crisis is a complex phenomenon. It goes beyond the gross deficiency in power generation, transmission and distribution. Nigeria cannot even provide the meters needed to measure the quantity of electricity used by consumers. Local manufacturers are now in a high stake gamble in foreign markets. There are 13.3 million electricity consumers in the books of the 12 power distribution companies (DisCos).

Unfortunately, only 6.1 million consumers have meters. The rest are at the mercy of the DisCos who slam estimated bills on them and compel them to pay for what they did not consume. 

In some communities, each consumer is billed anything from N30, 000 to N40, 000 monthly when in reality, consumption stands at N12, 000 per month.

About five years ago there was a pathetic incident in Ugbor, Benin City where a helpless consumer was mercilessly exploited by the DisCos. The man was occupying a three bed room flat.

The DisCo pounded him with monthly bill of N80,000. He grudgingly paid N5, 000 monthly and begged the DisCo to review his billing as he was not operating a manufacturing firm. The distributor refused to review the bills and kept pounding the consumer with the dubious estimated bill until his outstanding bill rose to N1.2 million.

As the consumer’s plea for mercy fell on deaf ears, he filed a petition with the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). NERC ordered the DisCo to appear before it to resolve the litigious billing quandary.

The DisCo appeared before NERC and was ordered to monitor the consumption in the complainant’s flat for one week and report to the regulator with the average consumption in the house.

The DisCo obeyed and returned a week later with the figure demanded by the regulator. It turned out that the consumption in the complainant’s flat was less than the N5, 000 he was paying monthly.

The regulator deducted what he consumed from what he paid and the complainant was ordered not to pay bills for one year because what he paid had covered the period. The DisCo was then ordered to supply the complainant with a new meter free of charge. The DisCo reluctantly obeyed. That is how the regulator saved the hapless consumer.

The main beneficiaries of the meter deficit are the DisCos. They exploit the deficiency in meter supply to defraud consumers. In 2024, the DisCos set November 25 as deadline for the withdrawal of the old meters that were recharged with electronic cards.

When the deadline arrived, the meters were withdrawn. Ironically, instead of replacing the old meters with new ones, the affected consumers were placed on estimated billing and asked to buy new meters at the current rate of N150 000 per meter.

The affected consumers were pounded with estimated monthly bills ranging from N35,000 even as most of them were paying N12,000 before their old meters were withdrawn.

NERC responded to the dubious antics of the DisCos by dispatching messages to the respective consumers warning them that it is the responsibility of the DisCos to replace the withdrawn meters with new ones and that they should not be intimidated into paying for the replacement. NERC is the only one protecting consumers.

The federal government had tried to settle the nation’s reprehensible meter deficit by encouraging the establishment of domestic meter manufacturing companies. 

So far 50 of such companies have been set up by private investors. However, several years after their emergence, they have remained the assembly plants that they were at the beginning. They have no local content.

That in essence limits their ability to supply a market with 7.1 million meter deficit. Ironically, government is losing patience with the snail speed at which the meter assembly plants supply products.

In August 2024, the federal government in apparent frustration signed a contract with three Chinese companies for the supply of 1.4 million meters.

That is the government’s belated move to address the 7.1 million meter deficit. The move is belated because the government’s first phase of meter supply which was to be funded by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) met a calamitous failure that left a huge vacuum of 4.1 million meters that no one knows how to fill.

The second phase of the meter supply deal is funded by the World Bank and is expected to be successful. But the failure of the first phase has created a vacuum that will perpetuate the meter deficit.

The major problem with the federal government’s move to fill the meter deficit with imported meters as the 50 domestic assembly plants fail to fill the void is that the move is regarded as an existential threat to the domestic meter assembly plants. 

The move is seen as capable of depleting thousands of jobs created by the assembly plants, while it will also take a toll on Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP) as it encourages capital flight.

Besides the threat to the domestic meter assembly plants, the government’s resort to imported meters is seen as a way of sourcing non-compliant products to fill the void. Pundits in the domestic meter assembly plants contend that the imported meters cannot stand the fluctuations in local power supply which the domestic meters are designed to withstand.

The move by the federal government has pushed the local meter assembly plants to the wall. The operators now believe that the local market can no longer sustain them.

In a desperate high stake gamble the domestic meter assembly plant operators are now exploring markets in Benin Republic, Togo, Niger and even Ghana for their products.

No one knows precisely what will be the outcome of the desperate move by the frustrated domestic assembly plants. 

The irony of the move is that if they succeed in securing a portion of the markets in the neighbouring countries, what started as the consequence of frustration could translate into gains for Nigeria.

They could  export their meters and bring in scarce foreign exchange. They should not be discouraged.