The National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) is a Federal Government initiative that aims to close the electricity metering gap by providing meters to about 4 million electricity customers by 2023. The NMMP aims to achieve its target in two phases. Given the completion of phase 0 (the initial phase), the Electricity hub organised a power dialogue centred around assessing the progress of the NMMP phase 0 and providing recommendations ahead of phase 1.
At the Dialogue were; Ali Yusuf, SA (Power Regulations) to the President, Office of the Vice President; Odion Omonfoman, CEO, New Hampshire Capital Limited; Modupe Oyekanmi, Assistant Manager, Project Communications, AEDC and Bode Longe, Consultant, Strategy and Corporate Planning, AEDC. They equally agreed that NMMP’s phase zero had been a success so far. According to Ali Yusuf, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) funded 860,000 meters of the 1 million meters targeted in phase 0.
While many agree that this phase had been successful, some challenges led to the prolonged delivery timelines. Among the challenges highlighted were:
- The lack of adequate consumer data: During phase 0 installation, several distribution companies (DisCos) lacked appropriate data on the number of unmetered customers within their franchise areas. This challenge stalled the installation of meters.
- False declaration of meter asset capacity: Due to the over-zealousness to kick off phase 0, there was not enough time to conduct capacity tests on meter availability of Meter Asset Providers (MAPs). To this length, many MAPs provided incorrect details on their capacity leading to the shortage of available meters.
- Lack of technical ability to carry out metering services: Phase 0 equally experienced a lack of technical knowledge to assemble and install meter assets.
In tackling the challenges experienced and ahead of phase 1 implementation, some measures have been designed to ensure optimum delivery during phase 1.
According to Ali Yusuf, the Federal Government (FG), in partnership with the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN), is planning towards meter installation capacity training for over 5000 Nigerians as this will solve the challenge of low technical capacity experienced in the previous phase. He added that as we advance, the FG will verify the volume of meters asserted by meter providers through the code issued by the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) to determine the actual number of available meters.
Furthermore, on the part of meter asset providers, Mr Omonfoman recommended that the regulator allow for adequate remuneration for meter installers ahead of phase 1 to accelerate the deployment of meters. Modupe also shared insights on the strategies applied by the Abuja Electricity Distribution that led to the success recorded in its meter installation.
During the Dialogue, we ran a couple of polls to gauge the audience perception of the current state of metering in the country. 71% of the online audience currently have a meter, while 23% do not. Of that number, only 27% had their meter installed within the last 12 months. 56% agreed that the NMMP had at least been successful to some degree, while 19% unequivocally said it had been successful.
Kindly click on this link to get a recap of the discussion.