Labour says electricity tariff increase will fail

AS the nation begins to come to terms with the private-driven power sector following the recent 45 percent hike in electricity tariff, workers in the sector have warned that for allowing privatization of power sector, Nigerians may have unwittingly played into the hands of private sector shylocks and collaborators in government whose stock in trade is to maximize profit at all costs.

However, organized labour and its civil society allies are  perfecting plans to make good their threat to lay siege to the office of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, if the hike is not reversed.

NERC had imposed the increase in spite of  the  opposition from consumers and a  court order against it.

The two labour centres in the country, Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, alongside civil society allies had, on Monday, during a nationwide mass protest against the tariff hike, picketed Electricity Distribution Companies, DISCOs, Generation Companies, GENCOs, and NERC, issuing a 14-day ultimatum to the commission to reverse the hike or its office would be taken over by workers.

Recall that after a stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos, labour and its allies, including the Electricity Consumer Protection Forum, ECPF, on Friday January 29, rejected the new electricity tariff expected to begin on February 1, and had, vowed to fight it.

Reading the text of the communiqué by the stakeholders, factional NLC President, Ayuba Wabba, said: “We collectively regard as illegal, unfair, unjustifiable, a further exploitation of the already exploited Nigerians the intention to increase electricity tariff com February 1, 2016.”

According to him, the increment was rejected because due process in the extant laws for such increment was not followed in consonance with Section 76 of the Power Sector Reform Act, 2005.  “There have been no significant improvement in service delivery, upon the fact that most consumers are not metered in accordance with the signed privatization Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, of November 1, 2013 which stipulated that within 18 months gestation period, all consumers are to be metered. There is a subsisting court order dated 28 May, 2015 by Justice Mohammed Idris of the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos, in the case of Toluwani Yemi-Adebiyi versus NERC & others, that no increment until the determination of the substantive suit.”

But electricity workers did not take the threat to picket DISCOs and GENCOs lightly, as part of the anti-tariff hike protest, insisting the anger should be directed at the Federal Government and its agencies such as the Ministry of Power and NERC.

The workers, on the platform of the National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, through their General Secretary, Mr. Joe Ajaero, contended that Nigerians had just seen a tip of the iceberg of what the private sector driven-power sector portended