Nigerians would be right to wonder if there is, really, anything to take away, let alone celebrate, from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Electricity Report 2015-2020 released in Abuja last Monday showing that the number of electricity consumers increased from 6.99 million in 2015 to 10.37 million in 2020. From 6.99 million customers recorded in 2015, the report says that the figure rose to 7.35 million in 2016 and then 7.95 million in 2017. For 2018 and 2019, the number of customers stood at 8.63 million and 9.55 million, respectively, with the number hitting 10.37 million in 2020.
Among others, the report also showed that the number of metered customers increased consecutively on a year-on-year basis from 3.15 million in 2015 to 3.80 million in 2019 but declined to 3.51 million in 2020. Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC) is said to have recorded the highest number of metered customers in 2015, Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company, IBEDC took the top position in 2016 and 2019. Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) is also said to have recorded the highest number of metered customers in 2020. On the contentious issue of estimated billing, the report showed a year-on-year positive growth rate consecutively from 3.85 million in 2015 to 6.86 million in 2020.
While the report is meant to give Nigerians a sense of what is going on in the electricity sector to help them appreciate the progress – or lack thereof, it seems particularly doubtful that they would pay serious attention to issues that fall short of addressing their daily frustrations with the sector.
There is, no doubt, a lot to be said of the report suggesting steady growth in numbers at a time national output has somewhat stagnated during the period, as tending to overstate the reality.
The question really is – how many Nigerians are being served in the real sense of the word? And what is the quality of service being rendered? In a country where service disruptions are seen as normal, and where grid collapse has become routine, what difference does having many customers, most of whom would be ill-served, make?
The same goes with the issue of meters. Mercifully, the report makes no pretense about how bad the situation is. In January, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) reported that as at November 2021, about 8.1 million power users out of the 12.8 million registered customers were still unmetered. Should it therefore come as a surprise that those in the estimated billing category nearly doubled over the same period?
For most Nigerians, the task of salvaging the sector has never been more urgent. Several years after the old power behemoth was broken into what was supposed to be more manageable units and entities, not only have the problems remained; somehow an effective, working synergy between the disparate actors has been a nigh impossibility. From the power generation companies (GenCos) that are routinely denied of dry gas to fire the plants, to a sole transmission company that is insufficiently strengthened to evacuate the power generated, right down to the distribution companies that have neither the financial muscle nor technical expertise to meet the most basic expectation of the consumer, the entire sector wobbles on even as the largest economy on the continent plods down the alley.
Nigerians have seen and read enough reports on the status of the electricity sector. What is missing is for their underlying promises to happen. These are simply making electricity available and ensuring that meters are supplied to the electricity consumer so s/he can have value for money. And none of the above, as far as we can see, comes close to rocket science.