180MW STOLEN FROM NIGERIA'S GRID ON ONE LAGOS-OGUN CORRIDOR NISO ORDERS CRACKDOWN, GENCOS DEMAND BLACKLISTING

Meter manipulation by large customers costs ₦9.7bn monthly; NISO issues mandatory recalibration directive

Nigeria's electricity grid is losing 180 megawatts of power to organised theft along a single transmission corridor in Lagos and Ogun states, a volume equivalent to the entire daily electricity allocation of the city of Jos, the Nigerian Independent System Operator disclosed this week.

NISO Managing Director Abdu Mohammed Bello revealed the scale of the losses during a stakeholders' meeting held in Lagos with distribution companies, generation companies, eligible customers, and large customers connected to the Ikorodu-Sagamu 132kV double-circuit transmission lines. Bello said investigations by the system operator uncovered widespread electricity theft and meter manipulation along the corridor, with large customers connected to both the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company and the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company implicated.

"We discovered that the Ikorodu-Sagamu 132kV double circuit line has a lot of very serious theft issues. The magnitude of the theft is unimaginable. The theft along that line is close to 180 megawatts which is almost equivalent to the daily allocation of Jos Electricity Distribution Company," Bello said.

Generation companies, represented at the meeting, valued the stolen electricity at ₦9.7 billion per month and an estimated ₦111 billion over 12 years. GenCo representatives demanded that implicated customers be disconnected from the grid, their details published, and that they be blacklisted and required to refund all accrued amounts plus interest.

To address the losses, NISO issued fresh directives to generation companies, distribution companies, and eligible customers requiring strict compliance with minimum off-take requirements, updated meter classification rules, and mandatory recalibration of metering instruments by the Transmission Company of Nigeria.

The revelations come as Nigeria's power sector absorbs the ₦3.3 trillion government debt settlement and presses for commercial viability across the generation-transmission-distribution chain.