The Federal Government of Nigeria announced that six million meters will be deployed nationwide in the first and second quarters of this year to reduce the number of unmetered electricity consumers in the country.
It disclosed this in a December 2022 document on the review of the performance of the power sector/Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry under the current administration.
According to the document, the government said it had successfully executed a metering initiative post privatisation with one million meters rolled out in the first phase of the National Mass Metering Programme.
The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, said the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission were fundamental in designing and implementing this programme.
He said:
“We are perfecting plans for an additional six million meters under the second and third phases of the programme that will commence in the first and second quarters of 2023 respectively.
“The first phase generated 10,000 jobs in installation and assembly and we anticipate over 20,000 additional jobs would be generate in the second phase. Both the phases have sustainable financing structures.”
He revealed that the government was also establishing a Meter Service Fund that would allow for continuous metering in the NESI.
Aliyu said the government would bequeath to Nigerians 4,000 megawatts of additional generating capacity, as it would complete and inaugurate the 700MW Zungeru Hydropower plant in the first quarter of 2023.
“We will also see to the operationalisation of the 240MW Afam III and 300MW Okpai Phase II to mention a few. We will set the country on a stable path for 10,000MW of supplied energy,” he stated.
The minister explained further:
“Today we are at 8,000MW with 5,000MW on-grid and 3,000MW+ of industrial captive off-grid, and we will leave an installed capacity of almost 22,000MW. We also have robust programmes ongoing with facilities and investments secured of over $3bn to eliminate the large gap between our transmission capacity and supplied energy.”
“We have changed the narrative of the sector from consumption spending (on subsidies) to real infrastructure spending. A total of 105 power transformer projects were completed during the period 2015 – 2022, adding a capacity of 6,216MVA to the grid, with 73 of the power transformers installed by TCN engineers in substations across the nation.”
