Band A Refund: No New Payout, and Why 4.7m Still Pay Estimates

Your feeder is on Band A, there's no meter on your wall, and you've spent another hot night in the dark reading WhatsApp broadcasts about NERC refunds. Are you owed a Band A refund, and what does having no meter do to your bill?

Sorry to burst the bubble. No new refund has been ordered as at 14 October 2026.

The only one is directive NERC/2026/002, issued in June, which covered February and March 2026 on Band A feeders that got under 18 hours of light a day. It paid 20% of the feeder's February energy cap as a token or bill credit. Never cash. Both deadlines are gone.

On the no-meter side, NERC limits what your DisCo can charge on an estimated bill, and getting a meter onto your wall ends the guessing for good.

So where did this Band A refund story come from?

From June. The "NERC orders refunds" report circulating in news feeds since 12 October is about four months old. It describes that same directive, a one-off special compensation for Band A customers who lost supply when gas shortfalls and vandalism cut grid generation.

Nobody owes you a fresh payment. Your DisCo might still owe you the old credit, though. Chase that.

Was my street even covered?

It went by feeder. A feeder is the line from the substation to your street, and each one sits in a band, so check which band your feeder is on first, then find your row below.

Who qualified for the special compensation, February and March 2026:

Your situation (Feb or Mar 2026)	Where that leaves you
Band A feeder, under 18 hours of light a day, one of the eight DisCos	Covered
Band A feeder, 18 to 20 hours a day	The normal compensation rules (Addendum NERC/2024/003) instead
Band B or lower	Not covered
Customer of Jos, Enugu or Yola DisCo	Not covered
Ordinary household or shop	20% of the feeder's approved February 2026 energy cap
Maximum-demand (MD) customer	20% of the average February 2026 energy billed per MD customer
Deadline for the February credit	31 May 2026
Deadline for the March credit	30 June 2026

The eight are AEDC (Abuja), Eko, Ikeja Electric, IBEDC (Ibadan), BEDC (Benin), PHED (Port Harcourt), KEDCO (Kano) and Kaduna Electric. Maximum-demand means factories and big offices. Not your flat. Not your provisions shop.

Prepaid customers were due a token. Simple. Postpaid customers, including anyone on a qualifying feeder who still has no meter at all, should have seen the credit printed on their next bill instead. Your DisCo can't use that credit to clear an old debt, and it must tell you what the credit is worth and which month it covers.

I never saw a credit. How do I check?

Gather your meter or account number, your feeder's name and any February or March bills and token receipts, then work down this list from the top until something turns up.

1. IBEDC customers: open the compensation tokens page on ibedc.com. There's one box, marked "Meter/Acct No", and a "Get Info" button underneath. Type your number and tap it. Load any token it returns.
2. Ikeja Electric customers: open the Band A Compensation Portal on ikejaelectric.com. The lookup loads as a dashboard inside the page, so give it a minute on slow data before searching for your meter number.
3. Everyone else: call or message your DisCo's customer care, give them your account or meter number and feeder name, and ask for the compensation record on your account.
4. If nothing shows, write a complaint to your DisCo's customer complaint unit and keep the reference number.
5. No fix after that: take the complaint and the reference to the NERC Forum Office for your state.

IBEDC alone started paying over 50,000 eligible Band A customers. Its page serves prepaid meters; if the lookup fails, call 0700 123 9999. Other DisCos are in our full Band A compensation guide, DisCo by DisCo.

And with no meter, what stops the DisCo guessing high?

About 8.05 million electricity customers in Nigeria had a meter at the end of August 2026. Roughly 4.7 million didn't.

Customers and meters, end of June and end of August 2026:

Customers	End of June 2026	End of August 2026
Active customers	12,589,486	12,749,789
With a meter	7,743,839	8,045,565
Metering rate	61.51%	63.10%
Still without a meter	4,845,647	4,704,224

That's 301,726 more metered customers in two months.

Slow going. Roughly three in every eight homes and shops still get an estimated bill, where the DisCo guesses how much power they used and sends a figure that you're expected to pay. There's a ceiling, though. Under NERC's capping order, NERC/197/2020, an unmetered home or small business can't be estimated above the average use of metered customers on the same feeder.

Say the metered homes on your feeder used 120kWh each on average last month. Your estimate for that month shouldn't go past 120kWh. Full stop. Check your tariff class, band and kWh charged. If the kWh sits far above what your metered neighbours on the same feeder use, put the complaint in writing and attach the bill.

How do I get a meter and stop the guessing?

Only one route is free.

DISREP meters come through a federal programme, so DisCos can't charge you for one, and you'll see the word "DISREP" printed right after the DisCo's name on the meter. Most meters installed in the second quarter of 2026 came this way. Ask for one.

A Meter Asset Provider (MAP) meter works the other way round: you pay upfront, and the DisCo pays you back as energy credit, a little each month. Those refunds have run late before, which is why NERC ordered DisCos in March 2026 to speed up the overdue ones, a ₦20.33 billion backlog to be cleared within a year. Before signing up, ask how the monthly refund will show on your bill. Get it in writing. Details are in how MAP meter refunds come back as tokens.

Once you're on prepaid, a dead feeder costs you nothing; your units wait on the meter until light returns. If you already buy data on AidaPay, meter tokens are there too, with cashback on each one.

For today: check your feeder's band, dig out those February and March bills, and if a credit is missing, send the written complaint this week.

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Published 14 October 2026. Prices and codes change - if you spot one that has moved, tell us and we will fix it.