18 February 2010
Nigeria: PHCN – Before Removal of Subsidy
Posted by AdaUgo under: Uncategorized .
Excerpts from the 17/02/10 Editorial of The Daily Champion
Alhaji Immamudeen Talba, the Administrator of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), who confirmed the Federal Government’s plan recently, in Minna, Niger State, said that by 2012, electricity consumers would pay N11 per kilowatt of electricity, being the full cost of the commodity, instead of the N6 per kilowatt that is being presently paid.
Talba claimed that in 2009 alone, government spent N177 billion on electricity subsidy, noting that tariff is generally low in the country and that even when consumers begin to pay N11 per kilowatt, the tariff in the country would still be the cheapest in the African continent.
Coming at a time when consumers are still agonizing over the failure of government to declare the emergency in the power sector that it promised or to meet the 6000 megawatts of power generation by the end of December 2009 that it assured Nigerians, Talba’s pronouncement is, indeed, the height of insensitivity to the feelings of the populace.
The fact of the matter is that at the latest check, the nation of about 140 million people was generating a miserable 2,700 megawatts of electricity, resulting in most homes, schools, industries and other business premises being in darkness. Consequent upon this, the number of the unemployed has been on the increase and the crime rate continues to skyrocket.
The cost of doing business has become so high primarily as a result of lack of electricity that some blue-chip companies have decided to shut their factories and relocate to neighbouring countries where the environment is more conducive for manufacturing. This, clearly, has been at a staggering cost to Nigeria.
The NERC, the Ministry of Power and, indeed, the acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, have all publicly admitted government’s failure to achieve set targets in power generation, and what Nigerians were hoping to hear was what concrete plans government was making to speedily solve the nation’s energy crisis, not the annoying claims of billions of naira allegedly spent as subsidy for non-existent electricity, or the even more upsetting news that consumers may, literally, soon have to pay more for darkness.
Read up the rest of this article here: http://www.champion.com.ng/index.php?news=28092
