The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, has urged electricity distribution companies, DisCos, to replace obsolete meters for their customers free of charge.

The instructions followed requests from some electricity companies to have customers exchange certain brands of prepaid meters, setting a deadline in November for this to occur.

For instance, the Ikeja Electric Distribution Company, and the Eko Electric Distribution Company,  had previously announced that the Unistar prepaid meters, which were introduced over a decade ago, would no longer receive support after November 14, due to technological upgrades and the token identifier rollover issue.

“NERC pointed out that the responsibility for the cost of meter replacement lies entirely with the distribution companies and emphasized that no customer should be subjected to estimated billing.

”The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission is aware that some DisCos have instructed customers to apply and pay for the replacement of faulty and obsolete meters within their franchise areas.

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“This directives contravenes the Commission’s Order No. NERC/246/2021 on the Structured Replacement of Faulty and Obsolete End-use Customer Meters in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry. The Order clearly states that no customer with a meter should be forcefully migrated to estimated billing.

“If any customer’s meter is adjudged by any DisCo to be obsolete or faulty, it is the responsibility of the DisCo to replace the meter free of charge, provided that the fault was not caused by the customer,” NERC said.

The NERC has urged customers to bring any cases of non-compliance to the attention of the regulatory body.

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