The Federal Government on Thursday flagged off the Power Force Programme, a training initiative under the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI) aimed at building a workforce of 5,000 certified meter installation technicians to help close the nation’s long-standing electricity metering gap.
Speaking at the launch, Minister of Power, Chief Joseph Tegbe described inadequate metering as one of the root causes of the liquidity crisis plaguing the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).
He said that when electricity consumption cannot be accurately measured, revenue cannot be reliably collected, a shortfall that ripples through the entire power value chain, discouraging investment and degrading service delivery.
Tegbe said the Tinubu administration’s approach rests on a simple principle: consumers should pay only for power they actually consume, while service providers should be paid in full for what they supply.
Smart metering, he said, is what makes that principle enforceable, replacing estimated billing with accurate readings and reducing disputes that have long undermined trust between electricity distribution companies and their customers.
The Minister singled out a recent legal breakthrough as critical to accelerating the rollout: the withdrawal of a court case brought by the Association of Meter Asset Providers of Nigeria (AMMON), which he said, had been a significant obstacle to faster meter deployment nationwide.
He commenced AMMON for choosing dialogue, along with the PMI, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), and meter asset providers for their roles in resolving the dispute.
With the obstacle cleared, Tegbe said the government attention has turned to a different bottleneck: a shortage of skilled labour capable of installing meters at scale.
The Power Force Programme is designed to fill that gap directly, training its first cohort of young Nigerians to become certified technicians able to install meters “efficiently, professionally, and at scale.”
“Meters do not install themselves,” Tegbe told the trainees. “Behind every successful metering programme must stand thousands of competent, certified and dedicated technicians.”
Beyond its technical aims, Tegbe said the programme was an employment and economic development effort, arguing that it would create jobs, build technical skills among Nigerian youth, support local content in the power sector, and stimulate broader economic activity.
The event, held in Abuja, by Kwara State Governor, and Nigerian Governor Forum Chairman, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, Special Adviser to the President on Energy and PMI Executive Secretary, Olu Verheijen, and the Heads of National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN) and the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA).
Tegbe closed by acknowledging that reforming Nigeria’s electricity sector would take time, but said the training programme reflected the consistency, partnership, technical excellence needed to sustain the effort and pledged continued government commitment to closing the nation’s metering gap.
