Amidst growing tension between Nigeria and its northern neighbour, Niger Republic, official report has indicated that Niger together with Togo and Benin Republic indebtedness to Nigeria on electricity supply has hit $16.11 million (about N12.60 billion) as at first quarter of 2023 (Q1’23).

This is even as the revenue remittances of the Distribution Companies of Nigeria, DisCOs, to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading, NBET, declined by 32.55 percent to N170.59 billion against an invoice of N252.92 billion issued in the first quarter.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, made this known in its Q1’23 report.

Under an international treaty, Nigeria sells electricity to neighbouring countries like Benin Republic, Togo, and Niger.

According to the report, the aforementioned value of electricity was sold to four firms in the three countries.

The report stated: “The firms are Paras-SBEE and Transcorp-SBEE both from the Benin Republic; Mainstream-NIGELEC from Niger; and Odukpani-CEET from Togo.

“None of the underlisted international customers made any payment against the cumulative $16.11 million invoice issued to them in Q1’23; Paras-SBEE ($3.46 million), Transcorp-SBEE ($3.85 million), Mainstream-NIGELEC ($5.48 million) and Odukpani-CEET ($3.32 million).

“The market operations (MOs) issued invoices to all the eight bilateral customers in the NESI in Q1’23 which amounted to N842.38 million. During the quarter, only North-South/Star Pipe made a remittance of N15.38 million against an invoice of N24.69 million issued to them.

“This means that for the period, the cumulative remittance performance of bilateral customers was 1.83 percent.”

The regulator explained that the non-remittance by international and bilateral customers continues a trend that should prompt the MOs to invoke the provision of the market rules to curtail the payment indiscipline being exhibited by the various market participants.

Similarly, the report noted that, “In Q1’23, the cumulative upstream invoice payable by DisCOs was N252.92 billion, consisting of N209.26 billion for generation costs from NBET and N43.66 billion for transmission and administrative services by the MOs.

“Out of this amount, the DisCOs collectively remitted a total sum of N170.59 billion (N141.51 billion for NBET and N29.04 billion for MOs) with an outstanding balance of N82.33 billion. This translates to a remittance performance of 67.43 percent in Q1’23 compared to the 78.69 percent recorded in Q4’22. Relative to Q4’22, the cumulative DISCOs under-remittance to the market increased by N11.19 billion which translated to a -6.16 pp reduction in the remittance performance in Q1’23.”