When you sit with a procurement director at one of Nigeria’s largest electricity distribution companies—known universally as DisCos—the conversation does not begin with solar panels or battery storage. It begins with a number: forty percent. That is the approximate share of electricity the DisCo purchases from the national grid that it cannot bill, cannot collect, or cannot account for. Some of it is lost to ageing, overloaded transformers and low-voltage lines that bleed power into the earth before it reaches a customer. Some is taken through illegal connections. A significant portion flows through households and businesses that have no meter, where consumption is estimated rather than measured, and where bills are negotiated rather than calculated. The DisCo paid for that electricity at wholesale rates. It will never see the revenue.
“The regulatory mandate is changing,” the director explains, speaking on the condition that his DisCo not be named while procurement rounds remain open. “NERC has been clear: complete the intelligent retrofit of major feeders and deploy at minimum two million prepayment smart meters by 2027. That is a procurement exercise of a scale this industry has not seen since the original privatisation. We are talking about hardware, software, installation, customer data migration, and ongoing maintenance—across territories covering millions of customers. And we are doing it while the grid continues to operate, and while customers continue to consume. You cannot shut the system down to upgrade it.”
The DisCo’s procurement team runs a structured RFP process that the director describes as “more rigorous than most external observers assume.” The evaluation framework is explicit. Thirty percent of the score is price. Forty percent is technical compliance—conformity with NERC’s smart meter technical specifications, interoperability certification, and data security standards. The remaining thirty percent turns on factors that international suppliers consistently underestimate: evidence of local service infrastructure, spare parts availability within Nigeria, and a proven track record of large-scale meter deployment in markets with similar operational conditions. “The price component matters, but if you score zero on local service readiness, you will not make the shortlist,” the director states. “We learned that lesson expensively during the first metering cycle. We bought meters from a manufacturer that offered an attractive unit price and had no in-country support. When the meters developed firmware issues eighteen months in, we could not reach anyone who could resolve it within a quarter. The meters sat. The regulator fined us. The customer relationship deteriorated. The cheap meter was the most expensive procurement decision we ever made.”
This procurement cycle, the DisCo is structuring contracts differently. Instead of a simple purchase-and-install tender, they are evaluating a metering-as-a-service model where the supplier finances, deploys, owns, and maintains the meter infrastructure, and recovers cost through a service fee per meter per month over a defined contract period. “It transfers performance risk to the supplier, which is where we want it,” the director explains. “If the meter fails, the supplier does not get paid. That aligns incentives in a way a purchase order never could. It also reduces our upfront capital requirement, which matters when you are deploying millions of units.”
The metering mandate also creates demand for technologies that extend beyond the meter itself. The DisCo is procuring distribution transformer monitoring systems that provide real-time visibility on load levels, phase imbalances, and temperature at each transformer—data that reduces technical losses and enables preventive maintenance. They are procuring customer information system upgrades that can handle the data volume from millions of smart meters generating readings at fifteen-minute intervals. And they are procuring vending platforms that allow customers to purchase electricity credits through mobile money, banking apps, and agent networks—distribution channels that are as operationally critical as the meter hardware.
“What international meter manufacturers need to understand,” the director says, leaning forward, “is that we are not just buying a device. We are buying a twenty-year revenue relationship with every customer that meter connects. The quality of that device, the reliability of the data it produces, and the speed with which the supplier can resolve issues when they arise—those things determine whether we recover the cost of the power we distribute. That is why local service capability is not a negotiation point. It is a pre-condition of being invited to bid.”
The market window for meter replacement across Nigeria’s DisCos has been estimated at approximately $1.5 billion. Several procurement rounds are expected to be released during the second half of 2026, creating the most concentrated sales opportunity for smart metering technology in Africa’s history. Companies that have already established local partnerships, demonstrated in-country technical capability, and structured metering-as-a-service financing propositions are positioned to compete. Those attempting to enter through an arm’s-length equipment supply model will find the procurement criteria themselves are designed to exclude them.
The Nigeria International New Energy & Power Industry Expo (NNEPIE) 2026, scheduled for September 16–18 at the Landmark Centre in Lagos, will host closed-door procurement briefing sessions with senior procurement officials from multiple DisCos, including the director interviewed for this article. The West Africa Power Asset Performance Improvement Forum, a dedicated segment of the conference, will focus specifically on PPP models for metering services and large-scale smart meter deployment.
Visit https://www.nnepie.com for the West Africa Power Asset Performance Improvement Forum agenda, participating DisCo procurement delegations, and exhibitor registration.
NNEPIE 2026: Powering West Africa’s Sustainable Energy Future.
