House of Representatives has told NERC to immediately put an end to its plan of hiking electricity tariffs.
Gatekeepers News reports that the House of Representatives has asked the Federal Government to direct the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to stop its plan of increasing the electricity tariff which is scheduled to take effect from June 2021.
Members stressed that Nigerians are already passing through difficult times and therefore, more burden should not be added to them.
Gatekeepers News reports the motion was sponsored by Aniekan Umanah and supported by the House.
Umanah noted that NERC, in accord with the distribution companies, has raised electricity tariffs five times since 2015, the recent being on January 1, 2021.
In his words: “The Nigerian masses have gone through so much hardship in recent times arising from acts of terrorism, banditry, kidnappings, farmers and herdsmen’s crisis with its toll on agricultural activities, displacement from ancestral homes, loss of loved ones, starvation arising from the inability to return to daily occupation and loss of personal properties running into several millions of naira.
“At a time governments all over the world are adopting measures to cushion the devastating effects of the dreaded COVID–19 pandemic on their citizens by providing a wide range of palliatives to losses of loved ones, jobs, businesses and general distortion in the social life, NERC is tinkering with the idea of a further increase in electricity tariff after that of 1 January 2021, in a country where 2/3 of the 200 million population is grappling with the crippling effects of the pandemic.
“The current economic recession made worse by hyperinflation has resulted in skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs, while the increase in prices of Petroleum Products has also triggered the further increase in transport costs and rents with unemployment rates at a frightening 33.3 per cent while the spending power of an average Nigerian has drastically reduced, any further hike in electricity tariff at this time will amount to overkill, lack of empathy and height of insensitivity.”
