Wealthy, Not Poor Stealing Electricity

Abuja — The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has disclosed that wealthy Nigerians, and not poor members of the society, engage more in theft of electricity supplied to them by either tampering with their meters or connecting illegally to service points.

NERC’s Commissioner for Finance and Management Services, said this on Wednesday night at the April 2018 edition of the monthly power dialogue of the Nextier Advisory in Abuja.

He explained that NERC recently had a company from Ghana that made a presentation to it on how the practice of meter bypass could be dealt within the country using a new kind of meter, and that a team from the commission will be in Ghana next week to understudy the initiative.

“Next week, a team from NERC is going to Ghana because we got a company that is actually devising a kind of meter that can detect energy theft. They came, made a presentation and we felt what they are showing is good and so our team is going to Ghana to look at it.

But let me just explain something about meter bypass or energy theft; it is beyond regulation and it isn’t beyond enforcing the regulation. It isn’t also beyond technology. There is no amount of technology or checks that you will do to eliminate energy theft.