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The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has announced, electricity tariff shall rise, six-monthly as a result of the latest N600billion subsidy removal on power.

The Chairman of NERC, Sanusi Garba, disclosed the latest development at a media briefing in Abuja just recently.

He said: “So that policy decision (stopping electricity subsidy) is as announced by the Minister of Finance. The subsidies have been, at one time as high as N600 billion a year, and gradually coming down to about N30 billion or so this year.”

“What happened on February 1, 2022, is a minor review of tariff. It is very clear on our website that every six months we will adjust rates to take care of the foreign exchange component of cost and also inflation,” Garba said.

According to the NERC Chairman: “The role of the commission is to make a determination of the rates that consumers should pay. So we strike a balance between consumers and investors.”

Explaining how subsidy had kept the situation under control all this while, Garba said  that subsidy had to go as a result of unsustainability regarding investors’ return on investments.

According to him: “In the past four, five years the level of subsidy has gradually been reduced, because you cannot run the electricity market on life support and say that investors cannot get their return on investment until government steps in to provide the required funding.

“Now subsidy is a policy issue determined by the government. The government will decide that the rates calculated or agreed by the regulator may at this time not be passed on to consumers. It has happened many times,” he said.

Commenting on the on the recent general grid shutdown, Garba explained it happened as a result of a trip-off caused by the conductor snap which started from the 330 Kilo Volt Ampree (KVA) from the Benin axis and vandalism of pipelines that also supply gas to the power plants.