President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered operators in the power sector to carry out mass metering of unmetered customers nationwide, as announced on Wednesday night by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
The NERC also, via its official Twitter handle, disclosed that it had not approved any increase in electricity tariffs as speculated.
They wrote: “The President has directed that there should be a nationwide mass-metering programme in an effort by the Federal Government to put a stop to estimated and arbitrary billing for electricity.
The statement was signed by its Chairman, John Momoh, noting that future tariff reviews would follow service-based principles.
“In all cases, poor and vulnerable Nigerians will not experience any increase.
“In line with these expectations, Discos are directed to engage with their customers on a Service Based Tariff Structure”, it said.
The commission stated that under the Service-Based Tariff Structure, Discos are only allowed to review tariffs for customers under the condition that customers were consulted and guaranteed level of electricity supply.
Also, customers receiving less than 12 hours of supply would also not experience any change in tariffs.
“This means that unmetered customers will not experience any cost increase beyond what is chargeable to metered customers in the same area.
“Even under the above conditions, there will be no change in tariff for the most vulnerable as tariffs for those consuming 50KW or less remain frozen”, NERC added.
