Electricity tariff hike
—Says over 95% of protesters on tariff hike Monday not affected
By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
ABUJA — THE Federal Government on Tuesday pleaded with the organized labour not to truncate the transformation plan on the power sector as it concerns the new tariff regime
The government also stated that more than 95 percent of members of the organized labour that protested on Monday and picketed the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC and the Transmission Company, TCN headquarters over the hike in electricity tariffs are not affected in the new increase.
Recall that the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, of Nigeria, had on Monday embarked on a nation wide protest over the recent hike in electricity tariffs which specifically affected Band A customers in Nigeria’s electricity supply industry and what the described as ‘colossal failure” of the Privatization in the power sector.
The protesters demanded a reversal of the increase.
Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the two days Federal Executive Council, FEC, meeting, presided over by President Bola Tinubu at the Council Chamber, Presidential Villa, Abuja, the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, appealed to the organized labour not to derail the transformation plan in the power sector.
Fielding questions on the labour’s demand, he said, “My appeal again is that they should please not derail or distract our transformation plan for the industry.
“We have a clearly documented reform roadmap to take us to our desired destination, where we’re going to have reliable, functional, cost-effective and affordable electricity in Nigeria. It cannot be achieved overnight because this is a decay of almost 60 years, which we are trying to correct.
“Nobody promised us or assured us that the road will be smooth. We knew it’s going to be rough, but we must weather the storm, which is going to be temporary. It’s a lot of sacrifice from everybody; from the government’s side, from the people’s side, from the private sector side. So we must bear this sacrifice for us to have a permanent gain.
“I don’t want us to go back to the situation we were in February and March, where we had very low generation. We all felt the impact of this whereby electricity supply was very low and every household, every company, every institution, felt it.
