Facts:

The Claimant by a writ of summons and statement of claim commenced this suit against the Defendant. The claimant being a consumer of electricity distributed by the Defendant who is a licensed electricity vendor in Nigeria, claimed that upon moving into the property, he made payment like other landlords in the Estate for the procurement of materials to extend the Defendant’s network to the place. At the completion of the network extension work, the Defendant requested the registration of all houses in the Estate for the immediate installation of meters which the Claimant did and was allotted account No. 0000626263 with which he applied for a meter. The Claimant alleged that instead of first installing the meter, the Defendant started billing for unmetered consumption of electricity, which was unimaginably wide and irreconcilable with the electricity consumption used by the Claimant. On this note, a complaint at the Defendant’s Akure office was severally, requesting that the Defendant install the metering device, but these complaints were not heeded, and instead, the Defendants continued with the estimated billing even when there was no electricity supply on the premises. The Claimant stated that the indiscriminate billing of his house was wrongful and unjustifiable as the Defendant obviously made him pay for the supply of electricity from the grid, electricity he never consumed, and urged the Court to grant his relief and declarations.

The Defendant contended that it never registered Claimant’s premises or any other for the purpose of the immediate installation of a meter and that the registration of the Claimant with an allotted Account No 0000626263 was to establish a customer relationship with him as he was then going to be supplied with the Defendant’s electricity. The Defendant also alleged that there was no time that it refused to meter the Claimant nor was the Claimant being billed outrageously, arbitrarily, unjustifiably and wrongly for electricity consumption. It contended that the delay in metering was due to a Federal Government free metering policy introduced, which made it impossible to meter Defendant’s customers including the Claimant in due time, and on this note, had always informed the Claimant of its strive to get the Federal government through its regulator to introduce a convenient metering policy for the investors in the electricity industry to enable the Defendant meter its customers. The Defendant stated that the estimated consumption billing of the Claimant is an approved billing methodology by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for unmetered customers as provided in the NERC’s Methodology for Estimated Billing, 2012 made pursuant to the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005. It is based on the availability of supply from the grid, then the supply and consumption of the Claimant measured from the electricity supplied to the feeder on his transformer, multiplied by the approved tariffs relevant to him and added approved taxes like VAT. In furtherance of this, the Defendant stated that the Claimant’s electricity bills are a reflection and represent the varied amount of energy delivered and consumed by the Claimant from month to month as may vary depending on available supply from the grid in a given month, and the Defendant does not benefit from the estimated electricity consumption bills of the Claimant, and thus urged the Court to dismiss the Claimant suit.