By AZUBIKE NNADOZIE
The hope of Nigerian electricity consumers to get reprieve from what has come to be known as crazy or estimated billing system by the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) nationwide may not be realised soon, as the process of acquiring the prepaid meters promised by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has been shrouded in confusion.
Hitherto, electricity consumers have been grappling with ‘crazy bills’ in the face of epileptic or non-availability of power supply, a situation that many Nigerians have described as peculiar to Nigeria.
According to Humphrey Dibia, a resident of Salvation Road, off Opebi Road, Ikeja, Lagos, “It is only in Nigeria that people are compelled to pay for services they never enjoyed. Sometimes you pay for absolute
darkness. If you refuse to pay because you didn’t enjoy the service, those guys will bring their ladder, climb the electricity pole and yank off your wire.”
These tales of woe are as old as electricity service in Nigeria.
Pa Davies, a landlord resident at Ikeja GRA, Lagos, said, “This problem has been with us for as long as I could remember. It was there when they were known as Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (ECN). They
later became known as National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), then the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). Now, they are called Power Generating Companies (GenCos) and Power Distribution Companies (DisCos). The names have changed but the quality of service remains the same.”
It was because of the stories of daily frustrations in the hands of electricity providers that many consumers heaved a sigh of relief when the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission was established. NERC was empowered by the Electric Power Sector Reform (EPSR) Act, 2005 to ensure an efficiently managed electricity supply industry that meets the yearnings of Nigerians for stable, adequate and safe electricity supply.
The Act mandated the Commission to ensure that electricity Operators recover costs on prudent investment and provide quality service to customers and also outlined numerous rights for them.
Among other things, it also provided that all new electricity connections must be done strictly based on metering before connection.
That is, no new customer should be connected by a DisCo without a meter first being installed at the premises, and that all un-metered customers should be issued with electricity bills, strictly based on NERC’s estimated billing methodology. NERC’s methodology, however, did not solve the problems of crazy bills, rather, it worsened it.
Then NERC introduced the prepaid meter system, which was to aid revenue collection and generation by the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) in 2006, as well as abolished the analogue meter reading system, which had been in practice.
However, the laudable projections of the NERC have since run into the murky waters of lack of capacity, sabotage and inefficiency that had been part and parcel of electricity generation and distribution in the country.
The initial enthusiasm and wide acceptance that greeted the introduction of the prepayment meter soon died off. It was widely accepted by the consumers because they believed that the days of estimated billing were over, but it was short-lived when it was discovered that the PHCN was hoarding the meters and selling them to the highest bidders.
Till date, this development has continued to generate a lot of controversies, and those who were lucky to have procured their own are counting their gains. They no longer have officials of the PHCN/DisCos banging on their gates and demanding for their electricity bills, accompanied by threat to cut them off the national grid. They described the introduction of the new system as a good innovation by the PHCN.
In the midst of public outcry over the relentless outrageous bills, and as a way of ensuring equity for both the consumers and the providers of electricity, the NERC, during the third quarter of 2018, had given an order that every Nigerian household must be installed with the prepaid meters by February 28, 2019.
But this directive never came to reality because there were no meters to deploy.
According to a recent survey, only between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of Nigerian households were on prepaid meters as at 30th April 2019. The bulk of 70 to 80 per cent of them are left in the hands of estimated billing.
This, according to consumers who spoke with our
correspondent, has given rise to the abnormal situation where an average household parts with no less than N10,000 as monthly electricity bill, no matter what gadgets they use.
The DisCos are said to sabotage prepaid metering because it does not favour their arbitrary billing system, whereby people are not billed in accordance with the actual amount of power consumed. According to Jide Johnson, an engineer with an Ikeja based company specialising in power generating plants, “Every year, the DisCos post outrageous amounts, amounts they cannot substantiate in the newspapers as debt owed them by electricity consumers, whereas they cannot distribute up to half of those bogus amounts. While the GenCos are busy generating power, the DisCos are lazing about, waiting for government subvention, and almost
half of the power generated are lost due to their inefficiencies.”
WHAT EXPERTS SAY
According to experts, the problem of estimated billing cannot end until there is effective deployment of prepaid meters to electricity consumers. They accused NERC of going about it the wrong way by
issuing directives for deployment of prepaid meters without first working out modalities for applying them.
DISCORDANT TUNES
Recall that in a move viewed as geared towards the amelioration of the situation, NERC had, on April 5 this year, issued permits to Meter Asset Providers (MAPs), urging them to roll out new meters not later than May 1.
However, the company licensed to produce the prepaid meters, Momas Electricity Meter Manufacturing Company Limited had said the directive by the NERC to begin the roll-out of new meters by May 1 was not feasible and realistic.
Chairman of the company, Kola Balogun, told Newsmen in Lagos that rolling out meters by May 1, as directed by the NERC, was unachievable, considering other challenges that required attention. According to him, the directive cannot work; in the first instance, consumers need to be educated about what is expected of them to have access to MAP licensee.
“Secondly, consumers have to be informed on the methods of acquiring meters, whether by payment or by investment. Lastly, every manufacturer (licensee) that wants to roll out meters needs a grace period of three months to enable them have the meters available in their warehouses,” he added.
Nigeria has about 11 DisCos taking care of different parts of the country. The indigenous meter manufacturer wondered why the NERC came
up with such directive, because of the time frame required in the processes.
“NERC only engaged few MAPs last week and then we have Mojec and others, including two Discos and we still have about eight to nine Discos, which are on the process of licensing,” he pointed out.
He said the process needed to be expatiated so that the media would have a clear understanding of the issues and the directive, adding that, according to NERC perspective, meter prices had been benchmarked on what was accepted for consumers to pay.
WHO OWNS THE METER?
The new metering scheme did not kick off on May 1 as planned by NERC, when it mandated the DisCos to commence implementation of the Credited Advance Payment for Metering Implementation.
CAPMI came about due to the slow pace of customer metering by the DISCOs, as well as the high level of complaints received from customers and dissatisfaction with the current estimated billing practices.
The CAPMI system provides a platform for willing customers to pay the cost of the meter into a dedicated account, jointly managed by the DisCo and meter Vendor/Installer. In the Ikeja electricity distribution area, customers were asked to pay N30,000 towards the acquisition of the prepaid meters. Once payment has been effected, the customer will have their meter installed, within 45 days, by a NERC accredited Vendor/Installer. But it never
happened.
A staff of the Ikeja DisCo, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “The CAPMI project was over-subscribed by the consumers and eventually abandoned. We are waiting for the next directive because we don’t have enough meters to go round, even for those who
paid.”
The NERC Act states that the meters, poles and cables used for electricity generation are properties of the DisCos. In the present situation, where NERC is wooing consumers to pay for the prepaid
meters, a cross section of those who spoke with our reporter were of the view that if they pay for the meters, it meant the meters belong to
them.
In the midst of the raging confusion, the consumer is left in the hands of estimated billing and there seems to be no end in sight.
Just recently, a former Chairman of the NERC, Dr. Sam Amadi, had warned that estimated billing might not end soon because the DisCos were trying to
cheat.
While answering questions on the meter asset providers (MAPs) regulation, initiated by the commission at a programme on Arise Television, monitored in Lagos, Amadi said the scheme was not a good policy, compared to the previous metering intervention.
Efforts to get the NERC perspective on the issue proved abortive, as the Commission’s Head of Corporate Communications, Dr. Usman Abba Abari refused to either pick our correspondent’s calls, or respond to his text/WhatsApp messages.
