Where is the Light Movement, a human right group, has lashed out at the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC),saying the agency has not lived up to its billing of setting requisite standards in the nation’s power sector
Specifically, the group said the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission only exists for the purpose of increasing tariff, satisfying the greedy appetite of the power distribution and generation companies and inflicting pain on Nigerians.
Sina Odugbemi, convener of the group, said the power distribution companies have the penchant for forcing new tenants/landlords to pay huge outstanding bills of supposed former tenants/landlords accumulated overtime through mostly fraudulent billing.
He also said: “Cases abound of disconnected consumers whose billing continued and forcing Nigerians to pay for electricity never supplied. The DISCOs have become so notorious that empty landed property is issued electricity bills. Currently, many estimated bills issued to poor and working class homes is more than N30,000 minimum wage, particularly since October 2020 when the exploitation was accelerated through the last tariff hike.
“The implication of this reality is that many Nigerians work only to be forced to surrender all their salaries or a large chunk of it to the Discos/Gencos, and this high tariff is contributing to the growing poverty. It is a clear case of ‘monkey dey work, baboon dey chop’.
“Since 2002, electricity tariff has been reviewed upwards from about N6 to now about N40 making it over 550 percent increment in the last 18 years. The reasons adduced by NERC for increasing tariff are: Inflation rate in Nigeria (11.3%), US rate of inflation (1.8%), gas price of $3.3 MMBTU, exchange rate of N310 to a Dollar.
“Going by this template, tariff will be increased perpetually and it will get to N100 per kwh in no distant time. Already, many consumers who have prepaid meters are forced to switch off their gadgets while consumers on estimated billing have growing huge debt hanging on their necks.
“The current tariff is tied to the level of service consumers receive by location, which invariably means higher supply attracting higher tariff plan based on where one lives. We do not see the logic in this present segregated pricing based on bands/location as it has created an apartheid-style supply and pricing wherein rich communities are supplied more electricity than poorer communities.
“The power sector was built with taxpayers money irrespective of class and tribe, there cannot be any rationale for entrenched discriminated supply based on communities one lives. We are tired and reject this exploitative policy that plunges Nigerians to paying for darkness”
He also punctured the metering system of the service providers, saying their refusal to issue prepaid meters was an orchestrated game plan to sustain issuance of outrageous electricity bills that do not reflect true consumption.
He said previous exploitative metering policies just like Meter Asset Providers Regulation 2018 failed because most Nigerians cannot afford the outrageous cost; the government spent about 27 billion Naira of taxpayers’ money, just as he noted that consumers were forced to buy meters for about N50,000 for single-phase and about N90,000 for three-phase meters.
He added: “The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has just doled out another N18 billion to power companies as part of the federal government Mass Metering Programme. All these government’s interventions amount to fraudulently using public funds to bail out private power companies”.
He said the only way forward is for government to reverse the privatisation policy, bring back the power sector under exclusive public ownership, adding that Nigerians have witnessed both, that is, public and private ownership, service under the so-called private investors is worse.
He advocated the need for democratic control and management by workers and consumers in a more transparent manner in view of the poor performance of successive bourgeois governments in Nigeria.
He added: “This is the only way looting of public funds, mismanagement, nepotism, cronyism and inefficiency can be put to check and sustain the growth and development of the power sector including guaranteeing uninterrupted and affordable electricity supply to all Nigerians”.
