Electricity Consumers To Get 4m Prepaid Metres Soon-FG 

CHIDI UGWU, with Agency report

Sale Mamman, minister of power, says electricity distribution companies (DisCos) will soon commence installation of four million free prepaid metres across the country.

 The minister  who spoke after the weekly federal executive council (FEC) meeting, said  said the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had disbursed N123 billion to the DisCos to boost the distribution of more metres.

According to him,the government is almost getting through with the distribution of its initial one million metres, tagged phase zero, to electricity consumers.

“It’s ongoing; we are almost rounding off. We’re have almost finished with phase zero. We are now going into phase one of the distribution of the metres, that is the remaining four million the Central Bank promised augment with.The first set is one million. We’re about to finish with that, but you know, it’s not the target. One million is very negligible compared to the demand of Nigerians.

“We are improving. Power generation has improved, you can see, I don’t have to tell you. We are moving from 3000 megawatts, today we are generating up up to 5000 megawatts or over that, so it is a great improvement.So, the more we replace some obsolete and outdated equipment, the more we improve the supply of electricity.

“Unless the metres are sufficient, we will not know which and where to push 24 hours supplies because there are some people who are ready for 24 hours and there are those who are not ready for 24 hours supply of light.”