Electricity Tariff: Engineer Asks NERC to Treat the Aba Power Case Expeditiously
Engineer Dike Ejike urges NERC to promptly decide on APL Electric’s electricity tariff review request, citing market parity with other DisCos during a public hearing in Abuja.
Following a public hearing yesterday in Abuja on APL Electric Company Ltd, Nigeria’s 12th electricity distribution company (DisCo) 's request for an electricity tariff review, Dike Ejike, an Abuja-based engineer and electricity consultant, has requested the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to take a decision on the request by the company for a tariff review as soon as possible.
“Both Aba Power and the other electricity distribution firms source their materials from the same market and with the same currency”, Engr Dike stated.
The electricity consultant, who trained at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka (UNN), said that Aba Power is the only Disco still operating the old tariff structure almost a year after others increased theirs by about 300%.
Band A tariff was increased throughout the country from N66 per kilowatt hour (kWh) to N225kWh on April 3. The next month, it was reduced to N206.8, only to increase to N209.5kWh in July.
‘It is interesting”, Ejike remarked, “that Aba Power still charges Band A customers N117.1 kWh when the others have been charging N229.5 kWh, about half of the others’ tariff, despite being the country’s youngest DisCo”.
Ejike alleged that Aba charges its customers far lower than what the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), a Federal Government firm, charges it for selling electricity to it owing to a lack of stability in gas supply to its generation plant in the Osisioma Industrial Layout, Aba.
The electricity consultant said that Aba Power must be reeling under a huge sacrificial burden supplying power at a far lower cost than it receives from a government company.
“For a firm that was forced to be in limbo for a whole 20 years because of the machination of a few Nigerians until Vice President Kaseem Shettima commissioned its power plant on February 26, 2024, it must have been a trying period”, he stated.
He continued: “Whereas the other 11 DisCos plus the six generation companies carved out of the Power Holding Company (PHCN) have received all kinds of Federal Government’s assistance to the tune of over seven trillion naira (N7Tr) since the privatisation of 17 of the 18 PHCN successor companies in November 2013, neither Aba Power nor the Geometric Aba Limited, the electricity generating member of the Aba Independent Power Project, has received even a kobo as subsidy.
“The request for a review of the Aba Power tariff review should be handled expeditiously”.
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