Tariff Hike And NERC’s Bands Of Confusion

This increment is supposedly for urban consumers, also known as Band A consumers in the country. Therefore, the DisCos, were allowed to raise electricity tariff to N225 ($0.15) per kilowatt-hour from April 1.

According to NERC, the rate increase will only affect 15 percent of the electricity customers in the country. This 15 percent consume 40 percent of the nation’s electricity.

Recall that NERC had on the 1st of November 2020 introduced Service-Based Tariff, SBT, scheme which classifies consumers based on the number of hours of electricity supply per day.

The NERC classifies consumers into Bands A to E as follows: Band A: Minimum of 20 Hours; Band B: Minimum of 16 Hours; Band C: Minimum of 12 Hours; Band D: Minimum of 8 Hours and Band E: Minimum of 4 Hours.

The question to first ask is, where is the electricity? How did the NERC arrive at the percentage of increase given that the nation has been almost completely in darkness? What is the guarantee that these shylock DisCos will not spread this increase across all the so-called bands?

Already, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) had gone ahead to violate that directive which immediately attracted NERC sanctions on Friday, barely three days after.

For wrongly applying the new electricity tariffs on some residents of the Nigerian capital, the sanctions included a N200 million fine and a directive that the wrongly billed customers should be appropriately refunded.

The NERC said the sanction was following complaints by several Abuja residents who tried to buy electricity units days after a tariff increase was announced.

Nobody should be deceived by this so-called classification as ultimately the increase would effect all consumers. The AEDC was just too much in a haste to begin what others will eventually implement.

The federal government’s desire of trying to ensure that only those who consume this electricity should pay for it may be well intentioned but it would fail and consumers would pay for services not rendered.

The biggest challenge facing the production sector today, is that they all run on diesel, petrol, and gas and these do not come cheap. The nation’s business environment is so volatile and too expensive to operate in that companies are daily seeking alternative environment to do their production and ship the end products to Nigeria, thereby exporting businesses and jobs meant for Nigerians elsewhere.

Despite Nigeria’s seeming abundance of hydrocarbons, gas, and oil, the energy sector in post-privatisation is a mess.

The Nigerian National Electricity Power Authority, later the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, was privatised for a period lasting over a decade. Eleven distribution companies and seven generating companies were sold to different private companies. The management of the single Transmission Company is held by the government.

That effort has left a host of post-privatisation challenges. Several years after the breakup of the power authority and the eventual sale of the power firms, citizens and industries still don’t have a reliable power supply.

Although the country has an installed capacity of 12,522 MW, it is only able to generate around 4,000 MW, which is insufficient for the population of 200 million. Added to that are price hikes, a variety of tariffs and estimated billing.

Secondly, the DisCos have never shown enough good faith in their dealings thus far. They have continued to reap off the consumers for services not rendered.

As things stand now, the nation is by far better of in availability of electricity before the so-called privatisation.

At least many of us shouted Up NEPA whenever electricity was restored those days, today even before one realises that electricity is restored it goes off in a flash, thereby, depriving the young ones of today of celebrating and screaming on the streets.

The reality is that these fraudulent DisCos charge those on lower band (E) more than the so-called bands A or B, because it is in this band or category that most of those deliberately denied of prepaid meters belong.

The truth is that these unfortunate consumers without prepaid meters who live in rural areas and urban slums pay more than those NERC say belong to Band A. They are the ones bearing the burden of the DisCos’ inefficiency that is why the distribution of prepaid meters has remained rocket science.

The NERC should be ashamed that in spite of government’s directive that all consumers are provided prepaid meters this has remained impossible, yet it is collaborating with these DisCos to swindle consumers with its so-called appropriate pricing.

Since NERC pretends not know, perhaps they should be told that approving tariff increase alone for Band A consumers would serve as a surreptitious means for the DisCos to ultimately increase tariff across all bands eventually.

Consumers must not deceived, I dare repeat, AEDC so-called error is only an inkling to what awaits us all soon.

Why is it impossible to designate some outlets to sell prepaid meters directly to consumers? Or is the government not aware that majority of these consumers are dying as a result of crazy estimated bills they get from these DisCos who still operate as government monopolies rather that private operators?

This coupled with the excruciating cost of living would be one burden too many for the people.

Enough of these bands of confusion, electricity tariff increase has been made across all bands, all we ask for is that prepaid meters must be made available to all consumers, so we can choose to remain without electricity whenever we cannot afford it rather than have a situation where people are billed for the perpetual darkness that these DisCos have left us.

This ability to make a choice is the reason that the success story of the telecommunications sector remains reference point

There is nothing urban or rural when it comes to electricity supply, we all suffer same fate: darkness is our lot.