Good People, I am from the village and not among the big people in Aso Rock and state capitals. My position that improving how much some customers pay for electricity in Nigeria, is a good policy, should not be seen as being insensitive to our citizens.
If we are realistic, the electricity rate in Nigeria is such a mess that no serious company will invest on that rate, unless it is a charity. We have to be real and deal with that. In some states, water rates were last reviewed in 1997. That is why no investor goes there. Unless we want charities, these changes must be made for REAL investors to come! I can tell you what the government will get from investors after its investment powerpoint presentation: “we like your market but we cannot invest at those rates because we cannot make money”.
The data is self-evident: some of the richest publicly traded companies in Nigeria are the power generating companies, GENCOs (Transcorp Power, Geregu Power) even as we have the most bankrupt or bankrupting companies at the DISCO (distribution) phase.
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Why is that? The GENCOs have great rates with the federal government to generate power, and the generation phase has attracted capital and investments. But the DISCOs do not have great rates to distribute, and no one wants to invest therein. The implication is that some DISCOs reject power because if they distribute, they will only return losses. In other words, there is no incentive to expand capacity to distribute the small power generated.
So, someone must fix that anomaly, and if the Minister is working on that, he must be allowed to do that. Personally, I have written about that, and I am happy someone is fixing it. It is about time; I commend the Minister for that boldness, hoping that someone will not sue to reverse the tariff, as was done last time, dislocating Nigeria’s electricity sector for years.
Prof., the challenge is not the tariff. It's the availability. A house that you used generator more and they bring outrageous bill, you will fight the suppliers and cut the wire yourself- I know because we did this in our compound at a time. Nigerians will pay if they see light
— Chijioke Kenneth Ezeala (@ChijiokeKEzeala) April 3, 2024
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The argument about electricity tariff hike was won before it took off, that’s because of petrol and diesel price hike preceding it. If you spend minimum of N20k weekly on generators in your house, what is there to pay N50k if you are guaranteed 20 hours of electricity daily? The argument will shift to availability, and no longer about whether rates should be reviewed upward or not.
Nigerians have been making sacrifices, whether voluntarily or forced, if all the sacrifices bring improved service delivery and standard of living gets better, not many people will remember what had been sacrificed.
DISCOS were created on the promise that capital would flow and there would be improved services, unfortunately a lot of things went, both from lack of capital and structural deficiencies. Another stumble could take till 2035 to be resolved, so we better get it right this time.
The big for nothing called TCN should also be dismantled, the idea of wanting to ‘level up’ all parts of Nigeria simultaneously is no longer tenable, it has never been anyway. So let the generation, transmission and distribution be decentralized, and not the inefficient and capital starved centralized system we have wasted precious decades on.