The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, says that the Federal Government would provide 10 million meters to electricity consumers in the next five years.
The minister stated this during the ministerial briefing on the performance of President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the last year.
He said the provision of the meters under the Presidential Metering Initiative would close the metering gap and reduce estimated billing in the country.
Adelabu added that the initiative was scheduled to provide two million meters per annum in the next five years to improve sector liquidity and limit estimated billing.
He said: “We have over seven million meter gap in the industry, out of over 12 million customers, just a little over five million are metered.
“Everybody is complaining of estimated billing and the president is determined to put an end to estimated billing.”
He said the ministry had just completed the bidding process for another 1.5 million meters financed by the World Bank Distribution Support Recovery Programme to improve sector liquidity.
He revealed that contracts for the meters would be awarded to meter providers in a few months.
According to him, about 50,000 meters were procured and deployed to military formations nationwide to reduce Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) debts.
“President Bola Tinubu and German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, witnessed the signing of an accelerated performance agreement to continue on Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) – the SIEMENs Project.
“The project aimed to improve the electricity supply in the country, adding that the implementation of the pilot phase had resulted in infrastructure improvement.
“This includes an additional grid evacuation capacity of 280 Megawatts (MW) and an additional 183MW to be inaugurated by the end of June.
“In Phase 1 of the PPI, the Federal Government planned to rehabilitate 15 brownfield sub-stations by August, and construct of 22 greenfield sub-stations by October.
“This is a total of 37 sub-stations across the country and once this is completed, the sector will be able to deliver a stable power supply.”
