For years, Nigerian electricity consumers have complained about arbitrary estimated billing by utility providers, with millions of households and businesses enduring the burden of unmetered energy estimates. The practice has steadily eroded public confidence and constrained growth across the country’s power sector.
A vivid illustration of this widespread frustration was captured in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by an aggrieved consumer.
Posting via @Lagos_Merchant, the user wrote: “I was barely home for two weeks this month, yet my DisCo served me an estimated bill of ₦145,000 for a 2-bedroom apartment! No light for days, but the bill keeps skyrocketing. We need prepaid meters now! This extortion must stop. #EstimatedBillingIsAScam #PowerSectorReform.”
Seeking to address the longstanding challenge, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu approved the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI) in November 2023 as a major intervention aimed at closing Nigeria’s significant electricity metering gap.
The initiative is designed to deploy smart end user meters and distribution transformer (DT) meters nationwide to improve billing accuracy, strengthen transparency, boost customer confidence and reduce collection losses across the electricity value chain.
The drive towards universal metering, however, suffered a significant setback after an injunction secured by the Association of Meter Manufacturers of Nigeria (AMMON) halted the bidding process across key government metering intervention programmes.
The legal dispute suspended the procurement of more than 1.55 million smart meters, bringing initiatives such as the Distribution Sector Recovery Programme (DISREP) and the Meter Acquisition Fund (MAF 3) to a standstill.
That impasse has now been resolved
