The Senate on Tuesday asked the federal government
to suspend forthwith the proposed increase in electricity tariff scheduled to
take off on July 1, 2020, bearing in mind the increased hardship associated
with the COVID-19 pandemic.
It also clamoured for the immediate reversal of the
power sector privatisation exercise carried out by the President Goodluck
Jonathan administration due to what it called "failure to deliver."
Adopting a motion entitled: ‘Power sector recovery
plan and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic’, sponsored by the Chairman of the
Senate Committee on Power, Gabriel Suswam, and 24 other senators, the
upper legislative chamber also urged the
federal government to consider additional tariff support to cushion the effect
of the shock over a fixed period to allow time required for TCN and Discos to
access funds and implement performance improvement investments that would
support increased tariffs to certain classes of customers especially during the
pandemic.
The Senate declared that if the privatisation
exercise in the power sector is not reversed, Nigeria might stop having
electricity in the next ten years.
The Senate also mandated its Committee on Power to
investigate all federal government interventions in the power sector since the
privatisation of the sector to date with a view to ascertaining the adequacy of
such interventions and their desired impact, and report back within four weeks
It also charged its Committee on Power to
investigate all market participants in the power value chain and ascertaining
the level of corporate governance compliance in the Nigerian Electricity
Industry (NESI), and report back within four weeks.
The Senate also urged the Central Bank of Nigeria
(CBN) to allow operators in the power sector access to foreign exchange for
procurement of equipment and materials like what is done in the aviation and
oil industry.
It, however, commended the federal government
"for the proactive initiative to establish the N1.7trillion COVID-19
Crisis Intervention Fund to cater for issues that are critical to effectively
manage the pandemic as well as stimulate gradual return to normal
socio-economic activities in the country."
The upper chamber also urged the federal government
through the Federal Ministry of Finance to include the power sector in the
disbursement of the proposed N500billion COVlD-19 Crisis Intervention Fund in
order to ameliorate the financial hazards and operational challenges such as
the enumeration of metering of actual consumers and recent problem arising from
the virus.
Commenting on the issue, President of the Senate, Dr.
Ahmad Lawan, said: "We gave power to them (power generation and
distribution companies) and they still come to the public to ask for funds. I
think it’s time for Nigeria to consider reversing the privatisation of the
power sector or they should just cancel the entire privatisation process
completely. If we leave it, we may not have power for another ten years."
No comments:
Post a Comment