The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has barred the Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) from billing already disconnected customers.
The ban which is contained in a March 2023 document entitled ‘’Customer Protection Regulation 2023’’ presented by the NERC chairman, Sanusi Garba, seeks to correct the problem of crazy billing which has been a source pain to customers, especially the unmetered customers.
‘’It is prevalent in the Nigerian Electricity supply industry for DisCos to keep billing disconnected customers even when they did not use power as a result of disconnection. The act has continued to lead to protest and litigation against the DisCos by aggrieved customers.’’ The Nation disclosed this in its report.
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In the NERC’s document, the commission said that DisCos can only bill disconnected customers when they are reconnected.
‘’Whenever a supply address has been disconnected for non-payment and a bill has been produced representing consumption at the time of disconnection, the Distribution company shall not bill any additional charges in respect of that supply address until after it has reconnected electricity supply to the address’’ Sanusi Garba said.
The document also noted that, during a billing period, a customer may be given a supplementary bill by a DisCo under special circumstances such as when there is a need to amend an earlier bill where a customer made a request for correction.
In Mr Garba words: ‘’’While a review referred to in subsection (1) is ongoing, the customer shall pay an amount equal to the average amount of the customer’s bill at the current supply address over the period of twelve months, the amount shall equal average amount of the customer’s bills for the period that he has been a customer at the supply address.”
Regarding Credit Management System, NERC ordered every DisCO to prepare a credit management policy which can be filed with the commission for approval
NERC noted that where it is established that a Disco has not complied with its approved methodology for billing unmetered customers, the company shall refund the excess charges to the customers at the next billing circle.
The regulator also directed that if a DisCo is notified by a customer during working hours that electricity supply to his premises had gone off, an authorized official from the DisCO should visit the customer’s premises within 24 hours to determine the cause of the problem.
It is said where the cause of the outage was failure or defect with DisCo’s equipment such as fuse, the fuse shall be replaced within 24 hours of notification’’