YEDC's management disclosed at a virtual stakeholder engagement that the company recovers only 55 percent of energy costs, receives an average of 80 megawatts for four northeastern states, and covers over 207,000 square kilometres, while the 2023 Ele
- YEDC covers over 207,000 square kilometres in northeast
- Disco recovers only 55 percent of electricity revenue
- Company receives average of 80 megawatts for four states
- New Electricity Act seen as growth opportunity for region
The Yola Electricity Distribution Company on Monday held a virtual engagement session with customers and industry stakeholders, presenting the most comprehensive public-facing account of the DISCO’s operational realities.
The session, which brought together customers including plant managers, officials of the Federal Ministry of Power, representatives from financial institutions, and YEDC’s entire Management team, covered Nigeria’s electricity value chain structure, the company’s specific position within it and the implications of the 2023 Electricity Act for the northeastern distribution landscape.
The Guest Speaker Engr. Bulus Abegye, YEDC’s Regional Manager for Adamawa, informed us that the YEDC franchise covers 207,000 square kilometres, making it, by landmass, the largest distribution company in Nigeria.
“Borno State alone, within the YEDC franchise, is bigger than Kano and Kaduna combined. Taraba is the third-largest state in the country. Two of Nigeria’s three biggest states by land area are inside the YEDC coverage zone.” Abegye said.
That territorial scale comes with a structural paradox: YEDC is large in geography and constrained in economic activity. The northeastern states it serves – Adamawa, Taraba, Borno and Yobe – have lower industrial and commercial density than the southwest distribution companies, which means that despite covering the most land, YEDC handles one of the smallest volumes of energy uptake per square kilometre of any DISCO in the country.
According to Abegye, its current customer base stands at over 800,000 registered connections, and it uptakes between 50 and 60 gigawatt hours of electricity every month, valued at over seven billion naira monthly.
The company is served by 12 transmission stations across the four states, with three in Adamawa, four in Taraba, three in Borno, and two in Yobe. It operates over 4,343 distribution transformers and more than 81 injection substations.
The most operationally significant disclosure in the session was the company’s cost-recovery rate. In February, YEDC received approximately 52 gigawatt hours of electricity from the transmission network but recovered only 55 per cent of its value, billing 4.36 billion naira and collecting approximately 3.6 billion from that total.
“There’s more room for accountability here,” Engr. Bulus acknowledged, framing the gap between energy received and revenue recovered as the central business challenge the company must address if it is to achieve financial sustainability and improve service delivery simultaneously.
The 55 per cent recovery figure reflects a combination of commercial losses, including unbilled customers and metering gaps, and technical losses, including energy that disappears in the distribution network through ageing infrastructure and illegal connections. Closing that gap requires investment in metering, infrastructure upgrades and revenue enforcement, all of which depends on the capital that a DISCO with constrained revenue flows struggles to generate independently.
Also speaking, YEDC’s Head of Regulatory and Compliance, Masoud Salisu Abdulkadir, added context on the energy supply system. According to him, even though YEDC has signed contracts with the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading entity for 122 megawatts of supply, the company currently receives an average allocation of only 80 megawatts, which must then be distributed across the entire franchise area of four states. With an average supply of 80 megawatts for a region spanning over 207,000 square kilometres, the arithmetic of power availability in the northeast becomes immediately clear.
Abdulkadir discussed significant structural developments in Nigeria’s electricity sector within the last two decades: the 2023 Electricity Act amendment that moved electricity from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent list, opening the sector to state government regulation and investment for the first time.
Edo, Lagos, Plateau, Ekiti, and Kogi are Nigerian states identified as having already passed state electricity laws, established state electricity regulatory commissions, and begun receiving transferred oversight responsibility from NERC for their internal electricity markets.
For YEDC’s northeastern franchise, this development creates a specific opportunity. The low energy uptake that has constrained the company’s revenue is directly connected to low economic activity and thin industrial investment across the region.
If state governments in Adamawa, Borno, Taraba, and Yobe can use their new legislative authority to attract investment in generation and distribution infrastructure within their boundaries, it increases the potential for YEDC’s franchise to thrive.
“We have potential for growth; we have potential to expand, all we need to do is to see how we can bring in stakeholders to participate in these opportunities for growth.” He stated.
Earlier in his opening remarks, YEDC’s MD/CEO Engr. Abdulrahman Isa emphasised the company’s commitment to stakeholder feedback and collaborative problem-solving.
“Apart from us saying one or two things, we also just want to listen to you. How are we serving you? Areas we can do better in and areas we are not looking at, just for us to improve our services.”
For customers in Adamawa and the three neighbouring states who have lived with the frustration of rationed power, delayed metering and billing disputes, the willingness of YEDC’s Management to sit in a virtual room with them and present the structural realities of the value chain rather than deflecting is itself a governance posture worth acknowledging.
The problems are systemic and predate YEDC’s current management by decades. The 55 per cent recovery rate, the 80-megawatt average supply for four states, and the 207,000-square-kilometre franchise area with the economic density of a much smaller region: these are the parameters within which any meaningful improvement must be achieved.
The engagement session was where YEDC named them. The work of addressing them continues.
This report was produced by the editorial team at The Gazette News | Independent. Human-Centred. Impactful in line with our commitment to accuracy, fairness, and responsible journalism. Information in this article is based on verified sources available at the time of publication. The Gazette News | Independent. Human-Centred. Impactful may update the story as new facts emerge or additional context becomes available.
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