The Federal Government has disclosed that Togo and Benin Republic owed Nigeria a cumulative $14.19 million for electricity supplied in the first quarter of 2024.
This was revealed in a report by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), which highlighted the non-payment electricity bills by the four international bilateral customers being supplied by power generating companies (GenCos) in Nigeria's electricity supply industry.
The report named the foreign companies involved as Para-SBEE in Benin Republic, which owes $3.15 million, Transcorp-SBEE in Benin ($4.46 million), Mainstream-NIGELEC in Togo ($1.21 million), and Odukpani-CEET in Togo ($5.36 million).
According to NERC, none of the companies made any payment against the cumulative invoices issued by the Market Operator for services rendered during the quarter in question.
In addition to the foreign debt, NERC noted that no remittances were made by local bilateral customers within Nigeria against the cumulative invoice of $1.88 million issued for services rendered in Q1 2024. However, the report did state that some payments were made during the same quarter by both local and international customers towards outstanding Market Operator's invoices from previous quarters.
"Cumulatively, a total of $5.96 million was paid by two international customers. Similarly, the Market Operator received N505.71 million from eight local bilateral customers as payment towards debts that were incurred pre-2024/Q1," the report indicated.
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NERC expressed concern over the situation, urging the Market Operator to enforce the market rules to address what it described as "payment indiscipline" among local and international bilateral customers.
The development followed earlier reports from May, 2024 that international consumers had failed to remit about $51.26 million to Nigeria for electricity exported in 2023. The Federal Government's data revealed that the bilateral power consumers also did not remit about N7.61 billion to the Nigerian power sector last year.
NERC condemned the development, stressing that the Market Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) responsible for managing Nigeria's power exports, must take decisive action to curtail the persistent payment defaults.
An analysis of the government's industry data showed that international consumers failed to remit $16.11 million, $11.97 million, $11.16 million, and $12.02 million for the electricity exported to them in the first, second, third, and fourth quarters of 2023, respectively.
