Millions Wave Goodbye to Estimated Billing as Metered Customers Hit 6.97 Million Amid Trillion-Naira DisCo Cash Boom

Nigeria’s prolonged battle against arbitrary electricity billing is slowly turning a corner, with official data showing that the number of grid-connected customers using functional prepaid and postpaid meters has climbed past the 6.9 million mark.

The structural evolution of the country’s energy sector was laid bare in the latest Electricity Report published by the National Bureau of Statistics. The comprehensive audit tracks grid supply metrics, distribution networks, and customer classifications across all eleven power distribution companies (DisCos), offering a transparent look into exactly how much power is reaching local neighborhoods and who is footing the bill.

The numbers show that the metering ecosystem expanded to 6.97 million users, registering a clear 4.58 percent bump from the 6.66 million threshold documented in the preceding quarter. When stacked against the previous year’s numbers, the expansion looks even healthier, recording a 12.18 percent year-on-year jump from the 6.21 million baseline.

More importantly for everyday consumers, this growth means the highly unpopular practice of estimated billing is being actively squeezed out of the market. The total volume of unmetered consumers dropped to 5.20 million—a significant 26.67 percent collapse from the 7.09 million citizens who were forced to pay unverified flat rates a year prior.

While the increase in meter installations offers a shred of consumer relief, the financial data reveals that the cost of staying connected is taking a heavier bite out of public pockets. Total revenue swept up by the eleven DisCos skyrocketed to ₦630.93 billion during the quarter under review, a sharp increase from the ₦570.26 billion pulled in during the previous three months. Looked at through a wider lens, total collections surged by over 23 percent compared to the ₦509.84 billion cleared in the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

“Total customer accounts hit 12.16 million, demonstrating a small quarter-on-quarter increase of 1.11 percent from the 12.03 million active profiles captured previously,” the statistical bureau’s official brief detailed. “On the energy delivery side, electricity supplied to consumer access points reached 6,627.56 Gigawatt-hours. This represents a quarter-on-quarter expansion of 7.62 percent compared to the 6,158.52 Gigawatt-hours supplied during the preceding operational cycle.”

Energy analysts point out that while the financial intake of the distribution companies has expanded significantly due to tariff structural revisions and improved billing collection tracking, the actual growth in physical power generation remains stubborn. The marginal 6.76 percent annual improvement in gigawatt-hours delivered confirms that structural bottlenecks across transmission grids still prevent the system from unlocking the massive generation capacities needed to fully support the country’s manufacturing and residential sectors.

Nevertheless, as regulatory bodies crack down on energy theft and enforce strict meter-deployment targets, the steady migration of over a million consumers away from estimated billing represents a crucial step toward building a transparent, pay-as-you-go utility market that protects the financial interests of the average household.