{"id":64051,"date":"2025-04-10T16:11:49","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T16:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=64051"},"modified":"2025-04-11T06:04:54","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T06:04:54","slug":"discos-to-refund-n626m-to-customers-over-overbilling-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/04\/10\/discos-to-refund-n626m-to-customers-over-overbilling-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"DisCos to Refund N626m to Customers Over Overbilling Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>By Patrick Idowu<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has come down hard on eight electricity distribution companies, ordering them to refund a whopping N626 million to customers who were overbilled for power supply.<\/p>\n<p>The affected DisCos include Abuja, Eko, Enugu, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano and Yola. They were found guilty of breaching approved energy caps for unmetered customers between July and September 2024.<\/p>\n<p>In a firm directive issued on Thursday through its official X account, NERC mandated the DisCos to complete the refund through credit adjustments by May 15, 2025, marking the close of the April 2025 billing cycle.<\/p>\n<p>Citing Section 34 subsection one of the Electricity Act 2023, the commission explained that the hefty penalty follows a thorough review which uncovered widespread violations of its billing regulations.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The public may recall that in 2020, the Commission issued the Order on Capping of Estimated Bills to ensure fair billing practices. Monthly energy caps were introduced to make estimated bills for unmetered customers comparable to the consumption of those with meters on the same feeder,&#8221; NERC stated.<\/p>\n<p>However, the DisCos blatantly disregarded these caps, leading to inflated charges for thousands of unmetered customers across their networks.<\/p>\n<p>The regulatory body reassured Nigerians of its commitment to protecting electricity consumers, vowing to enforce compliance with market rules and ensure that distribution companies play by the book.<\/p>\n<p>Industry observers see this move as a bold step by NERC to restore consumer confidence and send a clear message that exploitation in the power sector will no longer be tolerated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Patrick Idowu The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has come down hard on eight electricity distribution companies, ordering them to refund a whopping N626 million to customers who were overbilled for power supply. The affected DisCos include Abuja, Eko, Enugu, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano and Yola. They were found guilty of breaching approved energy caps [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":64052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[745,808],"class_list":["post-64051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-discos","tag-nerc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64053,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64051\/revisions\/64053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}