The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) on Monday assured that the proposed tariff hike, now suspended, would not affect poor electricity customers, if approved.
In his presentation to the Senate Committee on Power at the commission’s Head office in Abuja, the NERC Chairman, Prof. James Momoh, told the lawmakers who were in their oversight function that a mechanism had been put in place to absorb the masses of the adverse effects of the hike.
He said: “It is not going to affect the poor. We will make sure that the downtrodden and the people you feel for at the moment will not be affected by any increase we will be bringing forth.
“It will be based on the hours of service and the quality of power available there. We don’t want the poor to subsidise the payment of the rich. In other words, we must make sure that the poor are not sacrificed in the process of tariff increase.”
The Committee Chairman, Senator Gabriel Suswan, urged the commission to handle the tariff increase with caution because of the economic hardship it could inflict on the people.
He told Momoh that the Senate is opposed to the proposed tariff increase, but having viewed that most Nigerians could not even feed themselves at the moment owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission has “to make haste slowly” about the tariff.