The Central Bank of Nigeria has so far released N33.2 billion to electricity Distribution Companies in the country, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission.

This is a fraction out of the N59.2 billion earmarked for the National Mass Metering Project  by the Federal Government.

NERC Chairman, Engr Sanusi Garba, spoke during an interactive session between the Senate Committee on Power, NERC officials and representatives of the DisCos, saying that the project which is targeted at one million unmetered houses across the country and billed for execution between October 2020 and April 2021 has only attained 13 per cent implementation as at March 19, 2021.

“While N403,000 out of the targeted one million meters, have been delivered to the various DISCOs, only 127,000 have been installed, representing 13 per cent performance.”

“Target performance duration for the project which is phase one, entailing metering of one million houses across the country in reducing the metering deficit of 6.5 million, is six months, that is from October 2020 to April 2021.

“Though out of the N59.2 billion earmarked for the project, N33.4 billion has been released to the various DISCOs by the Central Bank of Nigeria but disbursement of the releases were very slow which resulted in many of them, accessing the fund in February.

“This largely contributed to the poor performance percentage by the DisCos for now, on the National Mass Metering Project.

“But with the chunk of the funds available to the DisCos now, the implementation performance index will rise astronomically within the next few weeks,” Garba said.

He also attributed the poor performance to delay in disbursement of funds, the chunk of which he said was made available to the DisCos in February this year.

Twentyten Daily has reported that the 11 Electricity Distribution Companies  across Nigeria have recorded a shortfall of N273.42 billion in 2020.

The companies cumulatively received a total of N542.73 billion out of N816. 15 billion they billed their consumers.