Nigeria’s metering performance improved between September and October 2025, with 187,765 electricity customers newly metered nationwide, according to the latest metering factsheet released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission.
The document shows that 80,943 customers received meters in September, while another 106,822 were metered in October. It indicated that the sustained meter rollout pushed the national metering rate from 55.37 per cent in September to 56.07 per cent in October.
During the same period, the country’s active electricity customer base grew from 12,030,315 to 12,071,018, reflecting an addition of 40,703 new customers. NERC’s figures indicate that the number of metered customers rose from 6,661,564 at the end of September to 6,768,386 by October, leaving 5,302,632 customers still on estimated billing.
The improvement might be partly linked to ongoing interventions such as the Meter Acquisition Fund and other metering programmes, which began yielding visible gains in the fourth quarter of the year.
According to the NERC report, Ikeja Electric posted the highest metering rate in the country at 85.59 per cent, with 1,113,421 of its 1,300,940 active customers captured. Eko Electric followed closely at 84.75 per cent, while Abuja Electric achieved 75.82 per cent.
However, four distribution companies — Yola, Jos, Kaduna, and Kano — remained below the 35 per cent threshold. Yola Disco ranked lowest at 28.92 per cent, followed by Jos (29.74 per cent), Kaduna (33.72 per cent), and Kano (34.50 per cent).
It was noted that Aba Power made the most notable progress in the month under review, installing 18,906 new meters and raising its metering rate from 69.49 per cent in September to 78.20 per cent in October, a 3.3 percentage-point jump.
Abuja Disco added 19,118 meters, while Ikeja installed 17,046, and Ibadan followed with 15,739 during the same period. The remaining DisCos, including Benin, Enugu, Port Harcourt, and Eko, accounted for the balance of the October installations.
Despite the significant gains, NERC’s report shows that more than 5.3 million electricity customers remain unmetered across the country. With metering now crossing the 56 per cent mark after years of stagnation around 50–55 per cent, sector observers believe that sustained progress through the end of 2025 could push Nigeria closer to achieving the long-delayed goal of universal metering.
Recently, NERC accused DisCos of not doing enough in metering. NERC Vice Chairman, Dr Musiliu Oseni, at the recently held 4th NESI Stakeholders Meeting in Abuja, revealed that there are currently 600,000 to 700,000 meters available in the country.
He challenged utilities to improve publicity and rollout speed, noting that the government has made the investment, so the DisCos need to step up. NERC Commissioner for Corporate Services, Nathan Shatti, told the DisCos to stop behaving as if they were doing customers a favour.
Reviewing the data on Meter Asset Provider refunds and installations, Shatti highlighted the “poor performance” of specific utilities, noting that Abuja and Kano DisCos have achieved only 2 per cent compliance on refunds.
Addressing the backlog of paid-for but uninstalled meters, he rejected technical excuses, saying, “If your network is not ready for metering, do not collect people’s money.”
He further observed that for every transformer or meter not installed, DisCos incur losses; hence, it is in their interest to meter customers and fix transformer-related issues. Shatti also revealed that over 350,000 meters are yet to be migrated to the new STS standard, demanding immediate cleanup of obsolete data.
