The Federal Government has taken responsibility for about 59 per cent of Nigeria’s total electricity generation costs in the third quarter of 2025, according to the 2025 third quarter report of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
The report, released on Tuesday, stated that the FG absorbed N458.75bn in subsidies to stabilise the power market amid weak remittances from international electricity consumers.
The report shows that the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) invoice payable by Distribution Companies (DisCos) stood at only N323.70bn during the period, largely due to the Federal Government’s intervention.
According to the report, the subsidy arose from the continued freezing of end-use customer tariffs at the rates payable in July 2024, despite rising generation costs.
However, without the government’s support, total generation costs for the quarter would have been about N782.45bn.
It stated that DisCos showed marginal improvements in billing and collection efficiencies, but recorded revenue shortfalls due to poor remittance from international bilateral customers.
According to the report, during the period under review, the naira value of total energy offtake by all DisCos was N854.53bn.
It stated that the total energy billed amounted to N706.61bn during the period, which translated to a billing efficiency of 82.69 per cent.
According to the report, this represented an improvement of 1.08 percentage points over the 81.61 per cent recorded in the second quarter of 2025.
The report stated that DisCos recorded cumulative billing losses of N147.92bn during the period.
It added that the total revenue collected by DisCos stood at N570.25bn out of N706.61bn billed during the period.
This feat resulted in a collection efficiency of 80.70 per cent, up by 4.63 percentage points from 76.07 per cent in the previous quarter.
Despite these gains, the weighted average Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) loss across all DisCos remained high at 33.27 per cent.
This comprised technical and commercial losses of 17.31 per cent and collection losses of 19.30 per cent.
The figure exceeded the 2025 MYTO target of 20.54 per cent by 12.73 percentage points and translated to a cumulative revenue loss of N108.75bn.
However, NERC observed a 4.65 percentage point improvement from the 37.92 per cent recorded in 2025/Q2.
It added that only Eko and Ikeja DisCos met their ATC&C targets during the quarter, while Kaduna DisCo recorded the worst underperformance.
This posted 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 2025/Q3, comprising N323.70bn for NBET and N76.77bn for transmission and administrative services payable to the Market Operator (MO).
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 the previous quarter.
However, during the period, international bilateral customers paid only $7.125m out of the $18.69m invoiced by the MO for services rendered in the quarter, representing a remittance rate of 38.09 per cent.
In contrast, domestic bilateral customers paid N3.19bn out of N3.64bn invoiced, achieving a stronger remittance rate of 87.61 per cent.
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