Senate Steps Down Electricity Tariff Hike Report Over Court Order

A court case instituted in Kano has halted the Senate’s plans to stop electricity tariff increase.

The Senate had set up a committee headed by the chairman, Senate Committee on Power, Enyinnaya Abaribe to investigate the hike in electricity tariff.

 After holding a public hearing with stakeholders, the committee submitted its report for deliberation and approval by the Senate.

In his report, Abaribe presented 10 recommendations to the Senate and urged it to prevail on the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to suspend the implementation of MYTO, 2024 which approved over 200 percent upward review of the previous tariffs from N68/kWh to N225/kWh to allow for robust consultation with the customers on the various bands on the cost of service instead of heavy reliance on feeder location and duration of service which are difficult to determine and monitor.

 The committee also urged NERC to ensure compliance with the mandatory requirement of stakeholder consultation under Section 48 of the Electricity Act, 2023 regarding future regulatory decisions to avoid a repeat of the confusion and public outcry that trailed the recent exercise.

It further advised that the “Ministry of Power and NERC should in the meantime adopt measures to address the problem of power scarcity holistically rather than its preoccupation with price manipulation which has proven to be counterproductive.”

Abaribe said NERC should hold the DisCos accountable on key performance indicators (KPIs) including failure to deliver on CAPEX and OPEX allocations, customer metering obligation under the Electricity Act, 2023, essential customer service obligations including customer sensitisation, implementation of energy credits for customers who invested in transformers, meters and other assets on the DISCO networks.

The committee also proposed that rate designs should only be cost-reflective if proper account is taken of the relevant macroeconomic environment that determine the affordability of electricity to the different segments of the market.

Furthermore, the panel said the federal government metering intervention should be encouraged and intensified to address current metering gap of 6.3 million and “this must be pursued by the FGN without prejudice to the statutory obligation of DISCOS to meter their customers as provided under Section 68(1)(b) of the Electricity Act, 2023. In this regard, Mr. President should be commended for the introduction of the Presidential Metering Initiative.”

It asked that “the Ministry of Power should establish an Electricity Consumer Protection (ECP) Unit to develop, implement and enforce the Electricity Consumer Protection component of the Electricity Act, 2023. 34(2)(c) and 119 (1)(f).”

After the senators deliberated on the matter, the deputy senate president, Barau Jibrin, who presided over the plenary, said he knew about the order of the court, adding that the Senate is constrained.

“There is a need for us to have restraint,” Barau said, adding that having listened to the comments of Senator Zam, who is the chairman of Rules and Business Committee, “the report is stepped down.”