The declaration of four categories of eligible customers in the Nigeria Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) bare six months after, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission on Monday (today) released the newly-approved eligible customers’ law and outlined the terms that would guide the direct purchase of electricity by end-users from power generation companies.

On May 15 this year, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, declared that eligible power consumers would be free to purchase electricity directly from the Gencos. 

Babatunde Fashola, declared four categories of eligible customers in the NESI based on the provisions of Section 27 of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005, whereby eligible customers are permitted to buy power from a licensee other than the DisCos, and therefore directed NERC to work out the modalities.

By declaring eligible customers, the minister empowered the consumers to buy electricity directly from licensees other than the power distribution companies, a development that the Discos opposed.

But despite the Discos’ opposition to the law, NERC on Monday presented the approved terms to Fashola in Abuja, and announced that the 11 electricity distribution companies had been designated as suppliers of last resort in the trading framework of the new law.

Going by their new designation, the Discos which may lose a good number of their high demand customers, will become standby suppliers of electricity to eligible customers if the power users’ contracted suppliers inadvertently fail to meet up with the required supplies at any time.

The Vice Chairman, NERC, Sanusi Garba, who presented the law to the minister, explained that the regulation was a product of extensive consultations with relevant stakeholders in Lagos, Kano, Yola, Jos, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Abuja.

The declaration provides that at least 20 per cent of the generation capacity added by the existing or prospective generation licensee to supply eligible customer must be above the requirement of the eligible customer and is supplied under a contract with a distribution or trading licensee at a price not exceeding the average wholesale price being charged electricity distribution companies by the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trader Limited. 

In this article: