The Federal Government has disclosed that four million prepaid metres would be distributed to Nigerian during second phase of the ongoing National Mass Metering Programme.
It added that the second phase would commence before April 1st, so as to ensure that many buildings that were yet to be properly meter were captured during this phase.
The Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure, Ahmad Zakari, disclosed this on Wednesday while responding to questions on a popular television station.
While explaining reasons for the huge number, he stated that one million units were deployed during first phase of the programme and was yet to address the need of the government which was to ensure proper metering across the country.
“President [Muhammadu] Buhari actually withheld some funding that was available from the World Bank for a short period of time to allow us to restructure the Discos and we have a World Bank facility that will fund another 1.25 million metres.
“So, what I would say is we know the gap when we started was about 9.8 million metres. One million has been done by the first phase of the National Mass Metering Programme.
“Another four million will be done by the second phase, which should commence shortly. Then another one million – funding has been secured and procurement will commence [later],” he said.
Zakari alluded to the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) overseeing more than 20 new local manufacturing companies onboarded to assemble the procured metres.
“Prior to the National Mass Metering Programme, there was no scalable programme on metering in the country. The first phase of the metering programme has distributed one million metres.
“We’ve subsequently concluded the process for another four million metres that are all going to local manufacturers,” the president’s aide added.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.