That the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, opened up to Nigerians recently that the 11 distribution companies would need about N220 billion to provide prepaid meter to power consumers is no more news.
Besides, the Discos inability to give meters to every household is not due to liquidity challenges, and difficulties in accessing credit to purchase meters which are compelling Nigerians to paying about N3 billion monthly in estimated billing.
Business Hilights investigations on why Discos are weak and economic with words in purchasing prepaid meters exposed two facts.
One, they have discovered that their current monthly revenue from estimated billings will fall when everybody gets prepaid meters; secondly, there are fears that over 50 per cent of owners of prepaid meters will bypass their meter on installation and this will amount to very low revenue at the end.
Further investigation by the Business Hilights Economic Research Team (BHERT) in parts of Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja showed that Disconnection Enforcement Teams of all the Discos who have spotted users of bypassed prepaid meters, instead of penalizing them, do broker a private secret arrangement with the house owners to be paying an agreed amount to their private pockets whenever they come for disconnection every month.
An official of one of the Lagos based Discos who pleaded anonymity confided in our correspondent during the research that “Why we may not give out prepaid meters is because every meter manufacturing company they have approached said they cannot produce either below or above international standard”.
The official noted that “All the Discos are going round the world looking for a prepaid meter firm that will build in tamper-proof chips to deny any form of bypass,” saying such companies had been very hard to come by.
“Let me assure you, as soon as a tamper-proof prepaid meter is seen anywhere in the world, all the Discos will go for them and give every Nigerian household a meter.
“In fact, what Discos are fearing, which is rip-off from electricity users, is what they have been gaining from estimated billing system”.
According to the disconnection official, “it is only use of force and sanctions that will compel Discos to give out prepaid meters, otherwise this hide and seek game will continue. What I do not know is whether officials of the Ministry can beat their chest and tell Nigerians that they do not know all these”.
Analysts say meter services remain an important aspect of a utility’s business anywhere in the world. Meter services broadly encompass metering technology and infrastructure, meter finance, meter installation, meter reading, meter testing, meter maintenance, and other ancillary meter services necessary for it to remain on the wall and functional.
Besides, in some advanced jurisdictions, meter services is an industry on its own, disaggregated from the electricity distribution business, as a separate, competitive but regulated component of the power sector value chain, with licensed meter service providers. In these jurisdictions, Meter Service Providers (MSP) are responsible for all aspects of metering, including financing and providing electricity customers with meters.
