Minister opines that Nigerians keep freezers on due to low tariff, renders an apology

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu has begged Nigerians after expressing his view that Nigerians keep freezers on for days because their electricity tariff is low.

In an interview with Channels Television on Thursday, April 11, 2024, he said: “Anything we have said that are considered offensive, we are sorry about that.”

The minister had been heavily criticised by many Nigerians in the last one week for telling journalists in Abuja on April 4, 2024 that Nigerians lack the culture of electricity consumption management because of “cheap” power supply.

According to Adelabu, reviewing electricity tariff was the exclusive responsibility of NERC, noting that the Electricity Act 2023 gives NERC the right to carry out a review twice in a year.

He added that once the distribution companies and customers were carried along, it was within the legal system to carry out a re-examination of tariffs.

He said: “Since I resumed office, one of the key issues that we found out is the lack of liquidity in the sector and the lack of appropriate pricing for power, which the government has been subsidising for a while.

"So, we looked at the subsidy requirements for the year 2024, and we found that it would cost the government over three trillion naira. We said let’s be reasonable because the government cannot afford to pay three trillion naira for subsidies in the power sector alone when the total budget is N28 trillion.

“N3 trillion is less than 10 per cent of the total budget meant for the entire country, and there are other competing sectors that we believe also need resources. We said it was not possible for the government to continue to subsidise at that rate. So we looked at how the subsidy can be reduced.

“15 per cent of the customers, which is about 1.5 million out of about 12 million customers, should be able to afford the new electricity tariff while about 85 per cent, over 10 million will continue to enjoy the subsidy. Why did we do that? From the problem in the power sector, you cannot upgrade the infrastructure 100 per cent for all the customers.

“We looked at those customers that have relatively better infrastructure that can enable the distribution companies to give some reasonable number of supply, and we said these are Band A customers. There are about 1500 feeders that fall under this Band A customer. We looked at them, and said no, let us reduce the number of feeders, so we downgraded them to just 500 feeders, so that those who will be affected will not be more than 15 per cent of customers.

“We considered that and I can tell you that review of tariff is legal once it is the exclusive responsibility of the NERC. The Act provides for review twice in a year. Every six months, we are expected to do a review of the tariff based on the economic indices."