Ikeja Electric: 34,000 Newly Metered Customers Fail to Make First Recharge Six Months After

Peter Uzoho

Ikeja Electric Plc has lamented that about 30 per cent of its customers metered under the Phase Zero of the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP), amounting to 34,000, were yet to recharge their prepaid meters six months after the completion of the exercise.

The Head, Prepaid Revenue Management and Metering, Ikeja Electric, Mr. Morenikeji Amosun, disclosed this to journalists in Lagos.

The programme was launched in October 2020 starting with the phase zero, with the target to meter one million electricity customers nationwide, and 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, but 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.

He said the company’s investigations had revealed that some of the customers bypassed their prepaid meters during the process of installation, which was a criminal offence.

He maintained that 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, however, said customers involved in bypassing meters would be charged to court and prosecuted, adding that the distribution company (Disco) was also working on retrieving the prepaid meters from some customers who deliberately refused to recharge for non-performance.