Reps plead for downward review of electricity tariff

THE House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on the need to evaluate the Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) on Monday urged the Ministry of Power and the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission NERC to review the high cost of electricity in Nigeria downward.

The Committee made the appeal during a public hearing organized by it on the matter during which it interfaced with key stakeholders in the power sector including the Ministry of Power, NERC, Distribution Companies Discos and Generation Companies Gencos and other industry players.

Speaker of the House Hon. Yakubu Dogara who declared open the public hearing stated that the committee on the need to evaluate the MYTO was put in place following the barrage of public outcry on the high cost of electricity in the country.

Dogara said that there declared that there was a need for a good tariff regime in the electricity industry which at the same time would not jeopardize the growth of the electricity sector.

He charged the key players in the power sector to come up with an acceptable tariff system that would be acceptable to Nigerians.

Similarly, Chairman of the Ad-hoc Committee Hon. Aminu Ashiru Mani in his own remarks said that there had been prolonged public outcry over the high cost of electricity in Nigeria.

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The lawmaker submitted that a persistent increase in electricity tariff from N10 per kilowatt to N80 per kilowatt of electricity was unacceptable to the Nigerian citizens.

He pointed out that there was the need to critically evaluate the MYTO system and re-assess all its inputs and assumptions in order to come up with a realistic and acceptable tariff regime in Nigeria.

However, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Power Mr. Louis Edozien said that the high cost of electricity tariff would be a thing of the past when the metering challenges in the power sector were adequately addressed by the ministry.

However, in his submission, the Chairman of NERC Prof. James Momoh told the Committee that the issue of metering would always have a great impact on electricity tariff.

He stated that the high cost of electricity tariff was due to the high cost of production and distribution of electricity by power sector players.

He disclosed that as a regulatory agency, the body was working on providing meters to 3 million electricity users across the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja.