The leadership of the National Assembly after convincing the Distribution Companies(DISCOs) to defer the to increase electricity tariffs in the country till the first quarter of 2021, have spoken on why they are against the hike.
The President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila and other principal Officers of the two Chambers on Monday met at the National Assembly with the Chief Executives of the government electricity regulatory body and DISCOs across the country.
On Tuesday the two leaders met with Vice President Osinbajo on the same subject. They spoke to journalists after the meeting.
Ahmad Lawan said;
“The joint leadership of the National Assembly sat yesterday with DISCOS and Nigeria Regulatory Agency. We believe that this is not the right time to increase the tariff in the electricity sector. Nigerians have a lot of challenges today because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation requires that we do everything possible to make life easy for our citizens.
Of course, government is doing a lot in this respect but we believe that DISCOS should meet with consumers, find better cost effective tariff. But before then, there must be some steps to ensure that the consumers are properly metered otherwise, you will still go back to guessing what consumers are consuming. That is to say that let the billing be scientifically based, it has to be based on what you actually consumed.
So we had this discussion with Mr. Vice President and we are sure that that announcement in the increase of electricity tariff in Nigeria is untimely. We believe that we need to do more work to ensure that before any increase, there must be some measures, steps, line of actions that must be exhausted including the metering. This is a welcome idea to the Vice President as well.”
Speaking on the same subject, Femi Gbajabiamila said;
“I will like to say that I think we have all agreed on an increase in cost-reflective tariff but the issue is that the timing is also important. Sometimes, timing is more important than even the policy decision that you make. There is a saying that the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. So the intentions is good but what about the timing.
We have all agreed to suspend this for a while, tarry a while and get the buy-in of the people, explain to the people why this has to be done, that it is for the betterment for the electricity to get stable. They are businessmen and cannot be undercutting themselves.
I think so far so good, the President listener attentively, the Vice President listener attentively and I think everybody is on the same page and hopefully, we will get some reprieve between now and whenever but it’s not going to happen today.”
