When the federal government launched the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) to provide prepaid meters for customers to ease the burden of meter acquisition, there were doubts as to how the initiative would be sustained given the dearth of local content needed to meet up in-country production of about 30 per cent of meter requirements.
About one million meters were targeted under phase zero and four million under phase one of the exercise. One of the key successes of the NMMP initiative was how rapidly it has increased private sector interest in investing in the local meter assembly, manufacturing and installation space.
In addition to the springing up of new meter assembly plants in Lagos and Kaduna, there has also been refurbishment and upgrades of some metering plants that had also fallen into disrepair such as EMCON in Kaduna.
This development in the meter assembly space is driven by the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) commitment to support local meter assembly/manufacturing as only indigenous companies would be allowed to participate in the bidding process for the upcoming phase of the programme.
