Ikeja Electric Plc says about 30 per cent of customers metered under the Phase Zero of the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) are yet to recharge their prepaid meters six months after the completion of the exercise.
Mr Morenikeji Amosun, Head, Prepaid Revenue Management and Metering, Ikeja Electric, said this at media briefing on Friday in Lagos.
The Federal Government had on Oct. 30, 2020 flagged off the phase zero of the NMMP targeting to meter one million electricity customers nationwide.
The programme, which saw the distribution of free prepaid meters to customers, was aimed at closing the metering gap in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
Amosun said Ikeja Electric was allocated 106, 000 meters under the programme, adding that the company was able to install 111,703 prepaid meters for customers because many of them requested for single phase meters.
He said out of the metered customers, about 34,000 of them representing 30 per cent of those who benefited from the exercise, which ended in December 2021, had not recharged their prepaid meters till date.
Amosun said the DisCo’s investigations had revealed that some of the customers bypassed their prepaid meters during the process of installation, which was a criminal offence.
He said some others might have probably travelled during the period, hence there was no need for them to recharge the meters while some customers claimed that they had no money to recharge the meters.
Amosun said customers involved in bypassing meters would be charged to court and prosecuted.
He said the DisCo was also working on retrieving the prepaid meters from some customers who deliberately refused to recharge for non-performance.
Going forward, he said Ikeja Electric was planning to deploy Intelligent Data Box (IDB), which was a smart meter that prevented energy theft by customers.
On the ongoing Meter Assets Provider (MAP) scheme, Amosun said about 45,000 customers had been metered within the last four months, especially with the implementation of the 24-hour metering initiative.
He maintained that the objective of the DisCo was to reduce the metering gap under its network to shore up revenue collection efficiency and improve customer satisfaction.
