NERC's revised order on DisCo revenue starts a 180-day clock from an "initial Order" its website does not carry

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission published a four-page instrument this month, numbered ORDER NO: NERC/2026/062A and titled the Revised Order on Successor Distribution Companies' Utilisation of Earned Non Admin Operating Expenditure. The PDF sits on the Commission's website under the file name Amended-order-on-nonadmin-opex_04092026171143.pdf, and it closes with the words that it was issued on the 4th day of September 2026 over the names of the chairman, Musiliu O. Oseni, and the vice chairman.

The order tells the successor distribution companies how to split money they have earned beyond their administrative costs. Paragraph 14(A) requires each DisCo to open a dedicated CapEx Provision account, and paragraph 14(B) sets out a table: a DisCo without market debts sends 50 per cent of its earned Non-Admin OpEx to that account and keeps 50 per cent for operations from the August 2026 to January 2027 market cycles, moving to 60 and 40 per cent from February 2027. A DisCo with debts pays 25 per cent to the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading company, 25 per cent to the Market Operator, 25 per cent to the CapEx account and 25 per cent to operations, and from February 2027 the last two shares become 30 and 20 per cent. We re-added every column of the table; each sums to 100, as the order states.

The commission explains in paragraph 9 that in April 2026 it reviewed how DisCos had used earned Non-Admin OpEx in the 2025 market cycle, and that while many did not recover enough to meet upstream obligations, a few recovered more than those obligations. The order does not name which DisCos fell into which group, and it gives no naira figure for the sums involved.

Two passages inside the same document sit uneasily with each other. Paragraph 2 and paragraph 15 both say the order takes effect from 4 September 2026. Paragraph 14(B) says the new split applies "Effective from the August 2026 market cycle". An order that begins on 4 September therefore governs revenue from a market cycle that, on its own wording, began before the order existed. The order does not say how the August cycle is to be treated for any DisCo that had already applied its August revenue in another way before 4 September.

The second passage is paragraph 14(D). It reads: "DisCos with outstanding upstream settlement obligation shall within 180 days from the issuance of the initial Order, finalise their reconciliation with NBET and the Market Operator ("MO") and agree a payment plan subject to the approval of the Commission." The deadline is counted not from this revised order but from an "initial Order", which the revised text does not number, date or quote.

The suffix A in NERC/2026/062A suggests an earlier Order 062, but that is our inference and not something the document states. We checked the Commission's orders listing at nerc.gov.ng/resource-category/orders/ across its first three pages and ran the site's own search for "non-admin" on 29 September 2026. Both returned only the revised order and a public notice about it; neither returned an original Order 062 or any earlier version of this instrument. We also checked the copies of the orders page saved by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine on 16 January, 18 April, 5 July and 11 September 2026. The April and July copies list no order on non-admin operating expenditure; the September copy shows only the revised order and its notice. Those copies cover the first page of the listing only, so they do not rule out an initial order posted elsewhere on the site or before January.

Without the initial order, a DisCo, a customer or a creditor reading the public record cannot work out when the 180 days run out. If the initial order was issued well before September, part of that window may already have passed; if it was issued close to the revision, the deadline falls in early 2027. Either way the date that matters is in a document the Commission has not put beside the one it did publish.

The Commission's public notice on the same subject, posted as images on its website, repeats the gap. Its second slide says DisCos owing NBET and the Market Operator "must complete debt reconciliation and submit Commission-approved repayment plans within 180 days", without saying from when. The first slide says the order "takes effect from September 4, 2026", while the second says debt-free DisCos must remit 50 per cent to the CapEx account "from August 2026".

Nothing in the order alleges wrongdoing by any company, and we do not suggest any. The order is a regulatory instrument about how revenue should be used; it describes money DisCos have earned under the tariff, not money that has been paid into any CapEx account or spent on any project. Paragraph 14(C) requires each DisCo to seek the Commission's "No Objection" before projects and contract awards and to file quarterly progress reports within 15 days after each quarter, but those reports, if any have been filed, are not among the documents the Commission has published with the order.

The order also carries small errors in its printed text, including "Disfribution" in its own citation clause and a signature line reading "this 4th day of September 202~" where the final digit is obscured by the signature. They do not change its meaning, but they are part of the record as published.

We are asking the Commission to publish, or point us to, the initial order referred to in paragraph 14(D) and to state the date from which the 180 days are counted, and whether the August 2026 market cycle is covered in full. We will add its answer to this record when we receive it.

What this rests on

The signed PDF of NERC Order NERC/2026/062A downloaded from nerc.gov.ng and read in full (Grade A); the NERC public notice images on the Commission's website (Grade A for what they say); our own check of the NERC orders listing, site search and Wayback Machine copies of the orders page (Grade C, our own work, described in the text); our re-addition of the utilisation table (Grade C arithmetic).

What this does not establish

Whether an initial Order 062 exists, when it was issued, and whether it was ever published elsewhere on the site or before January 2026 (archived copies checked cover only the first page of the orders listing from January to September 2026); which DisCos have market debts; any naira sums involved; whether any CapEx Provision account has been opened or funded.