Nigeria’s electricity distribution companies funded just 90,172 meters nationwide between 2019 and the third quarter of 2025, according to the latest report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), highlighting their minimal role in addressing the country’s chronic metering deficit.
The figures, contained in NERC’s third-quarter 2025 report, suggest that the DisCos have largely retreated from one of their core obligations: providing meters to all eligible customers. Industry stakeholders have long argued that metering is the responsibility of the utilities and should be provided at no cost to consumers.
Instead, the process has been mired in controversy, with many customers forced to pay upfront for meters on the promise of reimbursement through energy credits — refunds that critics say often failed to materialise. Others complain that they were unable to secure meters even after making payments.
NERC’s data shows that meters installed directly under the DisCo-financed framework accounted for only a negligible fraction of total deployments over the six-year period, despite repeated regulatory directives urging operators to accelerate metering.
Under the framework, 57,007 meters were installed between 2019 and 2023, followed by 31,622 in 2024. The pace collapsed in 2025, with DisCos funding just 1,178 meters in the first quarter, 234 in the second and only 131 in the third.
Metering under the DisCo-financed model was driven almost entirely by two companies. Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company recorded a cumulative total of 37,156 meters, nearly all of them installed between 2019 and 2023. Its activity dwindled sharply thereafter, with just 84 meters added in 2024 and modest figures in early 2025.
Jos Electricity Distribution Company posted the highest overall figure, with 52,174 meters deployed between 2019 and 2025. A significant spike occurred in 2024, when it installed 31,442 meters, followed by much smaller numbers in subsequent quarters.
All other DisCos reported marginal or zero activity. Enugu Electricity Distribution Company installed 597 meters, all before 2024. Kaduna installed 149 meters in 2024, while Kano deployed 96. Eko, Aba, Abuja, Benin, Ikeja, Port Harcourt and Yola recorded no installations under the DisCo-financed model as of the end of the third quarter of 2025.
In total, DisCos funded just 131 meters in the third quarter of 2025 — a mere 0.06% of the 228,614 meters installed nationwide during the period.
Instead, most metering was delivered through alternative schemes. NERC said 176,302 meters were installed under the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) framework, 44,104 under the vendor-financed model and 7,902 through the World Bank–backed Distribution Sector Recovery Programme.
“Out of the 228,614 end-use customers metered in 2025/Q3, 176,302 (77.12%) were metered under the Meter Asset Provider framework,” the commission said, adding that only 131 customers — 0.06% — were metered directly by DisCos.
As of the end of September 2025, NERC said 6.66 million of Nigeria’s 12.03 million active electricity customers had been metered, putting the national metering rate at 55.37%.
The regulator noted that the Meter Acquisition Fund, introduced in February 2023 through a tariff surcharge, had enabled Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company to install 175 meters in the third quarter, bringing total installations under Tranche A to 107,461. Tranche B, launched in October 2025, allows DisCos to access N28bn to meter higher-band customers.
NERC also reiterated that the $500m World Bank–supported Distribution Sector Recovery Programme aims to deploy 3.2 million smart meters nationwide, though only 7,902 had been installed by the end of the third quarter.
The commission warned that poor metering continued to drive disputes over estimated billing and deepen commercial losses in the power sector, stressing that faster meter deployment and improved customer enumeration were essential to boosting revenue and reducing losses across Nigeria’s electricity market.
