President Muhammadu Buhari has reiterated his resolve to mete stiff measures to any of the Discos or their agents selling prepaid meters to their customers against the directive that they should be distributed free.
This is in furtherance of the directive that a total of six million meters, manufactured or assembled locally, should be rolled out to electricity consumers to end the agitation against estimated billing.
The Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure, Ahmad Rufai Zakari, who represented the President at the FGN/NLC-TUC ad-hoc committee on electricity tariff stakeholders’ engagement in Ibadan, Oyo State, stated that the president understood the citizens’ plights on issues surrounding electricity and was determined to deal with bad elements.
He noted that they have made it very clear through the regulators direct order as well as intervention from the Ministry of Power that the meters are to be provided to Nigerians at no cost.
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He said:
Even for meters that were paid for, there is the directive from the regulator to the discos that they would need to find a way to reimburse those citizens over time. In cases where they find any disco or disco representative selling the meters or exploiting Nigerians to be able to get meters by paying, we would take the full measures of the law. The President has mandated that these meters must be free. We have also said that they must come from local manufacturers.
This brings about the question of if meter are the solution to Nigeria’s power supply problems, can companies use meters for production considering the amount of energy they expend and is it cost effective.
Increase in electricity tariff will make this difficult as cost of electricity might become unbearable for households and companies.
