The House of Representatives has kicked against the proposed increase in electricity tariff by Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) scheduled to take effect from June 2021.
In a motion sponsored by Rep Aniekan Umanah, the House said Nigerians were already passing through difficult times and therefore, more burden should not be added to them.
Umanah said NERC, working with distribution companies, has increased electricity tariffs five times since 2015, the latest being on January 1, 2021.
According to him, despite those increases, Nigerians have not enjoyed significant improvement in power generation, instead, they daily grapple with epileptic services from the electricity distribution companies (DisCOs) and unilateral exploitation in the name of estimated billing arising from non- metering of over 50 per cent of consumers.
He maintained that poor services by the DisCos have impacted negatively on the socio-economic growth of the country as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Report of 2020 on Nigeria indicated that the manufacturing sector lost over $200 billion to inadequate power supply while a whopping $21 billion was said to have been spent by Nigerians on generating sets within the period under review.