Borisade explained that the Disco on a monthly basis loses as much as N2 billion on account of energy theft. “From EEDC perspectives, these are commercial losses and we found that customers do this by diverting loads from their meters. Some of them divert consumptions from their heavy equipment”.

“We also have cases of welders that hang their wires on our conductors and use that in the middle of the night and these lead to major loses for us. We have an ATC&C loss figure that is upwards of 40 per cent and the large part of this is due to energy theft,” Borisade added.

He further explained: “There are also syndicates that clone our meters and sell to customers who are eventually not on our customer base, however we have a very robust plan that is GIS based. That will capture all buildings in our licensed areas and we will back that up with an enumeration exercise, smart meters that will be on pole tops and customer interface units in the homes and location of the customers”.