MOJEC, the leading smart meters provider in the power sector

The Nigerian power sector is plagued by a number of challenges, but these two are the most critical: Unstable power supply and lack of access to electricity meters. According to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), as of September 2021, only 37% of Nigerian electricity consumers had meters which mean 67% get estimated billing based on the estimated volume of electricity the appliances they own should consume in a month and the hours of electricity they got that month, however, the reality is a lot different.

According to Ms Chantelle Abdul, group managing director and chief executive officer, of MOJEC International, ‘’No nation can develop outside of fixing their power sector, you have to design a meter for Africa. We’ve pretty much gathered together the issues peculiar to the ecosystem and designed meters that cater to those issues.’’

To this effect, and in a bid to bridge the metering gap and ensure that Nigerians pay for the electricity consumed, the federal government launched the National Mass Metering Programme (NMMP) in partnership with Mojec International- one of the foremost indigenous metering companies in Africa to provide prepaid meters for customers. With an established state-of-the-art electricity plant of 2,400,000 meters per year, Mojec has ensured that Nigerian electricity consumers have access to meters with the introduction of smart metering technology to solve Nigeria’s power problem.

Furthermore, The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) in a bid to foster fast access and deployment of electricity meters to consumers introduced an initiative in 2018 called the “Meter Asset Providers” (MAP) The new scheme, gives room for third-party investors to supply meters to electricity consumers that have been enumerated by respective DisCos. In the first phase of the MAP initiative, MOJEC was able to roll out 311,112 meters to consumers, while for the second phase which is from Jan 2022 till date, the company has rolled out over two hundred meters and counting.

With this initiative, Mojec Meter Asset Management Company (M3AC) the MAP subsidiary of Mojec International provided meter assets, installation and maintaining financing of these meters to end users for 1-10 years and It is the largest MAP in the country today. Mojec has a story of many firsts, it initiated the first rollout of meters when there was a shortage in meter supply within the DisCo network and introduced the Vendor Financing template during the privatization of the industry which aided customers in accessing meters without paying bulk sums and in return ensuring that revenue was collected by the DisCos.

Mojec is not only the foremost electricity engineering, meter manufacturer and supplier to the Nigerian DisCos, but is also predominantly known on the continent as a market leader and innovator in metering. The company manufactures and supplies various meters ranging from Maximum Demand, Whole current, Pre-paid meters, Automatic Meter Reading System (AMR) as well as the latest in Metering technology Automatic Meter Infrastructure (AMI).

The Mojec as a group of companies with power subsidiaries has gone beyond metering in the past 38 years, they have built substations, power lines as well as the evacuation of power. The company has continued to deliver on smart meter manufacturing, clean energy, and other business areas. This is just one of the firsts, as MOJEC is the only player in the Nigerian energy sector to have such footprints across the world.

Mojec has produced and installed over two million smart meters in the Nigerian market, a first out of the many firsts of the company, and this is just the beginning for the company because according to Ms Chantelle Abdul, group managing director and chief executive officer, MOJEC International, ‘’ When we first came into the sector, 80% of Nigerians did not have meters, and today we have been able to reduce that to at least 50% and the number keeps going up. Our motivation and goal is electrification, that there is power in Nigeria and Nigerians have a constant electricity supply.’’