Electricity Tariff Increases in Nigeria

And we the consumers are not smiling because we hardly get to use electricity due to a critical shortage in supply leading to power cuts lasting several hours a day, that is if you are blessed to live in an area with "decent" supply...

We might be forced to tap lightening for electricity
at the rate we are going in Nigeria.

NERC urges aggrieved customers to petition against new electricity tariff

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission in Abuja on Monday advised aggrieved persons to petition against the fresh increase of electricity service charge.
The NERC’s Chairman, Dr. Sam Amadi, told newsmen: “We want to call on consumer groups and civil society groups to get more engaged with the work of the commission.
“The Business Rules of the commission allows any person aggrieved by the orders of the commission to file proper petition for the review.
“The Small and Medium Enterprises utilised this provision to request NERC to review the fixed charge paid by them.”
The NERC recently increased the electricity service charge from N500 to N700, which attracted negative reactions from customers.
Amadi said the new service charge was announced by the commission on June 1, 2012.
He said the Multi-Year-Tariff-Order empowered the commission to increase the electricity tariff between two and five years.
The chairman said the tariffs paid by customers were “fair, reasonable and necessary” and would guarantee improvement in electricity supply to Nigerians.
Amadi said the commission did minor reviews in 2012, which the findings were published on December 1 of same year, and “this did not result in tariff increase”.
He said that Section 76 of the Electricity Power Sector Reform Act enabled operators to recover the prudent cost of their operations plus reasonable return on capital.
Amadi said that investors would not come to invest in the country without good and fair tariff, stressing that fixed charge was component of electricity tariff all over the world.
“It is charged to recover some of the capital costs for producing and supplying electricity,” he explained.
According to him, NERC ensures that poor consumers on R1 are not charged any fixed charge and even some consumers’ charges are subsidised.
He explained that the commission was committed to the highest standards of accountability and transparency.
The commission noted that MYTHO was designed and executed with utmost transparency by all the stakeholders in the sector.
Amadi said that the reaction from the customers was because the supply of electricity in the country had not quite improved.

Source: The Sun