21 July 2017, Sweetcrude, Lagos – The Federal Government has inaccurately projected that 6 million households in Nigeria need metering.
According to Minister of Power, Babatunde Fashola, in a statement on Thursday, the federal government underestimated the number of Nigerian households who were yet to be metered before privatization.
One of the omissions of the privatization carried out by the last administration, according to him, was lack of compulsory metering before the privatization exercise.
“This is compounded by an inaccurate consumer projection of 6 million households, without a consumer audit”, he said.
He explained that due to government’s inaccuracy in the number of meters needed, the Ministry will introduce the Power Sector Recovery Program.
“These are the problems the Buhari government is now trying to fix with the Power Sector Recovery Program, which I will discuss later”, he said.
It would be recalled that before now, the electricity Distribution Companies, DisCos, have expressed the difficulties being encountered in the process of meeting up with the metering target.
According to them, the situation met on ground after privatization, was worse, and needed huge financial commitments than they envisaged before buying getting involved in the power sector.