BEVERLY HILLS, December 31, (THEWILL) – The Federal Government has said that electricity consumers who paid for meters under the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) scheme, will have a refund of their money.
This clarification is coming on the heels of enquiries by some electricity consumers, who wanted to know if the money they had paid for meters under the MAP scheme, would be refunded, bearing in mind the recent government’s pronouncement that six million meters would be distributed at no cost to customers under the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP)
However, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in a statement on Wednesday by the Head of Public Affairs, Michael Faloseyi, said “all customers who made payment for meters under the MAP scheme would be refunded.”
“The full cost of metering would form part of the tariff once the industry assumes full cost recovery”, it added.
The statement further disclosed that the “modality for the refund of the meter’s cost funded by the customers either through upfront payment or amortized payments is being worked out.”
The NERC had approved MAP in March 2018, a regulation that provides for the supply, financing, installation and maintenance of end-user meters by other parties approved by the commission.
The scheme introduces third-party meter asset providers as a new set of service providers in Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry.
Under the MAP scheme, which took off on May 1, 2019, electricity consumers have two options for acquiring a meter: upfront payment or instalment payments through metering service charge on a monthly basis.
The NRC further said that all power distribution companies (Discos) had keyed into the NMMP initiative; it however added that deployment of electricity metres is currently ongoing across all Discos under the first phase of the NMMP.
The commission said the first rollout of meters had commenced based on meters that were already available at the warehouses of the Discos and meter asset providers.
But the scheme has suffered setbacks, including changes in fiscal policy and the limited availability of long-term funding, according to the regulator.
