The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has warned that there would be total blackout in the country in the next three months if the proposed electricity tariff hike is not implemented.
The minister said this in Abuja on Monday, April 29, when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Power at an investigative hearing over the recent electricity tariff hike by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
According to him, “The entire sector will be grounded if we don’t increase the tariff. With what we have now in the next three months, the entire country will be in darkness if we don’t increase tariffs.
The increment will catapult us to the next level. We are also Nigerians, we are also feeling the impact.
For this sector to be revived, the government needs to spend nothing less than 10 billion dollars annually in the next 10 years.
This is because of the infrastructure requirement for the stability of the sector. But the government cannot afford that. And so we must make this sector attractive to investors and to lenders.
So, for us to attract investors and investment, we must make the sector attractive, and the only way it can be made attractive is that there must be commercial pricing.
If the value is still at N66 and the government is not paying subsidy, the investors will not come. But now that we have increased the tariff for A Band, there are interests being shown by investors.”
