NERC said the losses were driven largely by commercial losses, including energy theft and poor energy accounting, as well as the inability of DisCos to bill energy at the weighted average allowed tariff.

On revenue collection, DisCos generated N570.25bn out of the N706.61bn billed in Q3, resulting in a collection efficiency of 80.70 per cent, up from 76.07 per cent in the previous quarter.

However, the regulator said the weighted average aggregate technical, commercial, and collection loss across all DisCos remained high at 33.27 per cent, exceeding the 2025 MYTO target of 20.54 per cent by 12.73 percentage points.

This translated to a cumulative revenue loss of N108.75bn, despite a 4.65 percentage point improvement from the 37.92 per cent recorded in Q2. Only Eko and Ikeja Electricity Distribution Companies met their ATC&C loss targets during the quarter, while Kaduna DisCo posted the worst performance, recording an actual ATC&C loss of 71.10 per cent against a target of 21.32 per cent.

On market remittances, DisCos were billed a cumulative upstream invoice of N400.48bn in Q3, comprising N323.70bn payable to NBET and N76.77bn for transmission and administrative services owed to the Market Operator.

Out of this amount, DisCos remitted N381.29bn, leaving an outstanding balance of N19.18bn and a remittance performance of 95.21 per cent, slightly below the 95.65 per cent recorded in Q2.

However, the report highlighted weak remittances from international bilateral customers, who paid only $7.13m out of the $18.69m invoiced, representing a 38.09 per cent remittance rate. By contrast, domestic bilateral customers paid N3.19bn out of N3.64bn invoiced, achieving a stronger 87.61 per cent remittance rate.

The convener of PowerUp Nigeria, Adetayo Adegbemle, said the electricity subsidy is no longer sustainable, saying the government ought to have found a way out of the burden. Adegbemle said the subsidy affects the entire value chain as the Federal Government failed to fulfill the subsidy obligations.

“I’ve been pushing that our current subsidy is not sustainable. And that’s because it affects the value chain all the way down. If you are asking me today again what I feel about power subsidy, I have not changed my position on that. Subsidy is not sustainable. The government is supposed to have evolved a way out of it,” he said.

Adegbemle believed that one of the reasons why the government had yet to remove subsidies was because of political considerations, especially the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.

“I believe that there are some political considerations as well. One of them was the shock effect of the removal of the fuel subsidy. And the rising exchange rates. If anything, we all know that the shock effect led to high inflation.

“So, on one hand, I want to believe that that’s one of the reasons why they’ve not removed power subsidies. But then, we have also proposed alternatives for them, one of which is the Power Consumer Assistance Fund that the Electricity Act itself asked them to work on. The Federal Government has not paid these subsidies; if it had paid, we wouldn’t be owing the GenCos. We need to bring manufacturers back to the grid,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Nigeria Electricity Consumers Advocacy Network has described the Federal Government’s service-based tariff policy as a failure, warning that recent electricity tariff adjustments have failed to reduce subsidy payments and instead deepened inefficiencies in the power sector.

Speaking with The PUNCH on Tuesday, the National Secretary of NECAN, Uket Obonga, said the introduction of the Band A tariff regime, which was justified by government officials as a pathway to subsidy reduction, had delivered the opposite outcome.

“I have always called the service-based tariff policy a scam from the beginning, and going by the promise made by the regulator, minister, and the government in introducing the Band A tariff to reduce subsidy, has it been reduced now? The more baffling thing is how revenue collected by the Discos is almost now at par with the amount incurred as electricity subsidy,” Obonga said.

He also expressed concern that revenue collected by electricity distribution companies was now almost at par with the amount the Federal Government was paying as an electricity subsidy, raising questions about the effectiveness of the policy.

“The most baffling thing is how revenue collected by DisCos is almost now at the same level as what the government is incurring as an electricity subsidy,” he said. “That alone shows that the policy and its implementation have failed.”

The consumer advocate accused DisCos of benefiting from poor supply while continuing to collect tariffs from customers. “DisCos are now benefiting from selling darkness to Nigerians and still collecting money,” Obonga said. “They are charging for power that is not supplied. That is the reality.”

He said the original objective of the service-based tariff regime had collapsed because the structure of electricity demand in Nigeria was fundamentally flawed.