The Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission (NERC) has reported that the federal government disbursed N36bn towards electricity subsidies in the initial quarter of 2023.
According to NERC’s quarterly overview, this expense equates to a monthly payment of N12bn, transferred to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET).
As the organization responsible for collecting revenue for generation companies and the Transmission Company of Nigeria from the DisCos, NBET received N141.5bn out of the N209.2bn invoice issued to the DisCos. It’s worth noting that the 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos) gathered N247bn in revenue in the first quarter from the N359.3bn billed to customers.
The report also detailed individual DisCo payments. Abuja DisCo paid N20bn out of a N32.8bn bill, while Benin DisCo paid N14.4bn from N17.8bn. Similarly, Eko Disco paid N19.4bn out of N22.8bn, and Enugu DisCo paid N15.72bn from N20bn. Other DisCos also made payments in relation to their respective invoices.
The government’s financial intervention was prompted by the lack of cost-reflective tariffs, which resulted in a gap that the government covered through tariff shortfall funding, applied to NBET invoices payable by DisCos.
Out of the 171,107 meters installed in 2023’s first quarter, the report reveals 5.80% were metered under the NMMP scheme, 92.71% under the MAP intervention, while 1.47% and 0.02% were metered under the Vendor Financed and DisCo Financed schemes, respectively.
NERC disclosed it received 85 incident reports from licensees, 33 of which resulted in 16 injuries and 17 fatalities. Investigations have been initiated into all reported incidents.
The report also highlighted the most common complaints among the 249,683 received by DisCos during the period. The majority pertained to metering (47.66%), billing (22.72%), and service interruption (9.22%). These three issues accounted for over 79% of total complaints.
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