By ikenna Omeje

In a bid to close the metering gap and end estimated billing, President Muhammadu Buhari has said his administration will  make funding immediately available for electricity Distribution Companies  (DisCos) in the country  to roll out 1,000,000 meters in the first phase of the Presidential Mass Metering Initiative, at no cost to consumers.

Buhari who disclosed this on Wednesday, via his official Twitter handle, informed that deployment of the free meters has already started in some parts of Kano, Kaduna, Lagos and Abuja.  

The president said: “Under the first phase of the Presidential Mass Metering Initiative, we are making funding immediately available for DisCos to roll out 1,000,000 Meters in the first phase, at no cost to consumers. Deployment has already started in parts of Kano, Kaduna, Lagos, and Abuja…
Future phases of this Metering Initiative will help us fully meet the 6.5 million deficit of meters nationwide, and will impact an estimated 30 million consumers.

“All meters under this program will be sourced from local manufacturers and in-country stock, to create jobs…

“We are committed to ending estimated billing in all forms in Nigeria, and ensuring that Nigerians pay only for the electricity they consume.”

According to the Q4 report of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) released some months back, about 60 percent of electricity customers in the country are not metered.

President Buhari approved the National Mass Metering Program (NMMP) implementation to deal with the current metering gap (comprising unmetered customers as well as customers with obsolete meters) in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI), which currently stands at about 10 million.