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Organised labour has warned that it would not support any hike in electricity tariff, when Nigerians rarely have power in their houses and offices, and factories are closing down and fleeing to neighbouring countries.
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) said the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) should not encourage inefficiency by approving higher tariff because the DisCos do not collect the billed revenue for the current tariff.
The TUC president, Quadri Olaleye, said there was very low collection efficiency in the system. According to him, the argument that the increment in tariff would help to improve power supply holds no water.
He said, “For decades now, we have been paying for services not rendered, which to us is daylight robbery. Increase in tariff means passing the low efficiency loss to the customers. If collection efficiency is high enough, it will help reduce the gap in cost of delivering electricity and reduce need for higher tariff.”
The labour leader also wondered why the federal government would release another intervention of N600 billion to electricity operators, demanding what they did with the first two bailouts of N213bn and N701bn released to support power distribution, generation and gas companies.
He said, “We have issues with government making all these serious interventions without significant progress. Is it not shameful that Nigeria, with over 200 million population cannot boast of 6,000MW consistently for one week at a time that South Africa, with a little over 50 million population is generating over 50,000MW?
“The truth is the power sector, nay Nigerians, have not had peace nor recorded any significant progress since November 2013 when the sector was privatised. Government cannot continue to enrich some cabals in the name of privatisation.
“They cannot continue to use taxpayers’ money to fund a major sector like power yet businesses are collapsing. Operators have given us room to suspect them, and nothing is going to change the mindset until we begin to get value for our money.”
Olaleye opined that the privatisation process must be reviewed for the sake of the citizenry and to save the few companies still standing in the country.
