Nigeria’s electricity metering drive recorded further progress in the second quarter of 2026, but millions of customers remain without meters, leaving a significant gap in the country’s efforts to improve billing accuracy.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) said electricity distribution companies installed 350,270 meters between April and June 2026.
Despite the installations, the figure represented a 17.97 per cent decline from the 426,985 meters installed in the first quarter of the year.
NERC’s latest report showed that 7,743,839 out of 12,589,486 active registered electricity customers had been metered by the end of June.
This means about 4.85 million active customers were still without meters as of the end of the second quarter.
The commission said the meters installed during the quarter came through several programmes, with 205,486 provided under the Distribution Sector Recovery Programme (DISREP).
Another 123,833 meters were installed through the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) framework, while 13,028 were provided under the Meter Acquisition Fund (MAF).
DisCos financed 7,643 installations, while vendors financed another 280.
NERC said the country’s overall metering rate had risen to 61.51 per cent by the end of June.
However, the decline in quarterly installations highlights the scale of the challenge facing the electricity sector, particularly as millions of customers continue to depend on estimated billing.
The commission said it had continued to issue monthly energy caps for feeders in states that had not transitioned, as part of measures to protect unmetered customers from excessive billing.
With more than a third of active customers still unmetered, the latest figures suggest that Nigeria’s metering challenge remains far from resolved, even as authorities and DisCos continue to invest in closing the gap.
The key challenge for the sector now is not only increasing the number of meters installed but also maintaining the pace of deployment needed to ensure that every electricity customer can accurately measure and pay for the power consumed.
