Minister of Power, Engr. Sale Mamman has described as false rumours of major hike in electricity tariff, stating that there is no plan to significantly raise tariff. He said that the hike in electricity tariff, Nigerians should expect an increase in efficiency from the sector to reduce tariffs while managing headwinds from foreign exchange and inflation. Mamman explained that the order issued by NERC on the 26th of April, 2021, titled 'Notice of minor and extraordinary review of tariffs for electricity transmission and distribution companies' was a routine procedure, adding that the review planned by NERC is in accordance with Section 76 of the Electric Power Sector Reform act of 2005. He said, "The tariff for customers on service bands D & E (customers being served less than an average of 12hrs of supply per day over a period of one month) remains subsidized in line with the policy direction of the Federal Government. "Section 76 of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act of 2005 provides clear guidelines for the periodic review of tariff (based on market data and submissions from licensees). The guidelines include the provision that the Commission shall give notice of activities related to tariff. "The Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) per NERCs regulation obtains inputs from operators in the market every 6 months to perform minor reviews and a major review is required every 5 years. Thus, as in January a minor review will occur in June. Given the timing for the Extraordinary review has also elapsed, a review will occur for consideration in January 2021." The minister stated that President Buhari administration remains faithful to the adopted resolutions from the Joint FGN-NLC/TUC Technical Committee on Electricity Tariffs which makes recommendations for NERC to conduct an extraordinary review of the MYTO to further review factors and align them with current evolving realities. Giving resaons to the recommendation, he said that it was to ensure that efficiencies could be derived from an extraordinary review to further reduce tariff. "Government is committed to increasing supplied energy to the grid through rapid expansion of infrastructure through the various facilities for the sector either to the DISCOS under strict terms or to the Transmission Company of Nigeria," he said. In addition, Engr. Mamman said that the National mass metering program is on course to reduce losses, stressing that to date more than 500k meters have been delivered to DISCOs in phase 0 of the program in 5 months, which exceeds the progress done for the entire MAP scheme. While assuring that the administration will eliminate the metering gap, he said that the administration is not unaware of the challenges that Nigerians face which is why government has continued to subsidise the band D and E consumers to pre-September 2020 rates.
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