AN APPRAISAL OF THE LEGAL IMPLICATION OF THE METER ASSET PROVIDERS (MAP) REGULATION 2018 FOR THE PROTECTION OF ELECTRICITY CONSUMERS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The privatization of the power sector in Nigeria heralded the enactment of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005. The Act established the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission as a corporate body .The Commission is mandated under the Act to make regulations to ensure fairness, safety, reliability and quality of service in the production and delivery of electricity to customers. The increasing number of unmetered Nigerians and have no choice but to depend on the estimated billing method employed by the electricity distribution companies (DISCOS). This has led to an outcry by Nigerian electricity consumers who are daily groaning under excessive and fraudulent billings by the distribution companies. The emergence of excessive and fraudulent billings is made possible by the adoption of the estimated billing method by the distribution companies. The penchant for using estimated billing methods by the distribution companies has reached an extent that they have jettisoned the postpaid meters that were initially installed by the Power Holding Company before the advent of the privatization of the electricity supply industry in Nigeria. DISCOS on their own part complain about inadequate resources to procure prepaid meters for all Nigerian electricity consumers. They make this complaint because they lacked adequate preparation before venturing into the electricity distribution business. It would appear that somebody somewhere has to bear the burden for their deficiencies. The government in response to this situation has adopted the pampering approach, by enacting regulations through the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) that will enable independent meter providers, in agreement with the DISCOS, supply prepaid meters to the Nigerian electricity consumers. These meters are to be paid for contrary to the tariff structure approved for the DISCOS, which had already incorporated the cost of the meters into the electricity bills to be paid by the Nigerian consumers. This paper examines the legal implications of the Meter Asset Provider Regulation of 2018 enacted by the NERC pursuant to the above objectives. The paper finds that the regulation while solving the immediate meter needs of the Nigerian electricity consumers who are at the receiving end of the fraudulent and excessive estimated billing methods of the DISCOS has left in its trail a lot of unanswered questions. First, in the context of the privatization of the electricity sector, whose responsibility is it to provide meter for the Nigerian electricity consumers? Second, what happens to the cost of meters already incorporated in the approved tariffs charged the electricity consumers by the distribution companies? Third, what is the method adopted in the payment of meter service charge by the electricity consumers? These and other questions are the unfinished task of the Meter Asset Provider Regulation 2018.