By Precious Owolabi, Ado-Ekiti

Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Oyebanji, has emphasised his administration’s significant investment in restoring electricity to both urban and rural communities previously disconnected from the national grid, stating that billions of naira have been channelled into the sector.

Speaking while receiving a delegation from the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI), Abuja, led by its Technical Director, Engr. Lawal Lawal, the governor lamented that despite the substantial financial commitment, the anticipated impact on power supply and distribution had been undermined by poor coordination and inefficiencies within the system.

Oyebanji noted that his government had demonstrated both capacity and commitment by reconnecting long-neglected communities to the national grid and ensuring access to subsidised smart data meters.

While commending President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for his initiatives to improve electricity supply nationwide, the governor expressed frustration over the lack of proper metering, which he described as a major setback in achieving effective power distribution.

“Since we did not get help from anybody, we decided to help ourselves, and we are making impact. The only way we are having recourse to you is because we cannot produce meters. I don’t know if the commissioner had told you how much we have invested in rural and urban electricity. We’ve been able to connect them, buy transformers and do wiring, we’ve spent billions of naira.

“For your agency to be effective, I heard you saying that meters are coming in. You can only buy a meter when there is electricity, but our challenge here in the state is that the electricity coming here is small, and people have even paid for meters they can’t get because they are not available. This is discouraging for us as a government, so there is a need to be proactive in the drive to serve the people right.

“I know how much we have spent on transformers. We are distributing transformers now; we have connected all our agric clusters, but there has not been a connection,” Oyebanji stated.

Earlier, PMI Technical Director, Engr. Lawal Lawal, highlighted that the initiative was a direct response to the President’s vision to bridge Nigeria’s electricity metering gap.

He noted that Tinubu had swiftly signed the Nigerian Electricity Act of 2023 into law to liberalise the sector and facilitate new infrastructure development nationwide.

Lawal further outlined the administration’s goal of closing the existing seven million meter gap, adding that state governments had provided crucial funding and support.

He commended Governor Oyebanji’s contributions, stating that such efforts had been instrumental in advancing the initiative, which aims to deploy seven million end-use meters across the country’s 774 local government areas within the twelve operating DISCOs.