Electricity Minister Abubakar Aliyu
According to the Federal Government, consumers in Nigeria fail on their power bills at the highest rate in the world.
Abubakar Aliyu, the Minister of State for Power, said this on Thursday in Abuja at a discussion with the Senate Committee on Power and the leaders of other agencies involved in the electricity industry.
The minister claimed in his statement that the federal government of Nigeria heavily subsidised energy, making it available at the lowest price on earth.
He provided evidence for his assertion by comparing the price of energy in Nigeria to that of its neighbours.
According to Aliyu, “Nigeria has the lowest electricity prices in the world, especially for gas to power, which is heavily subsidised.
For instance, although power costs 15 cents per kilowatt in Nigeria, they are 42 cents in the Niger Republic, 23 cents in the Republic of Benin, 25 cents in Mali, 28 cents in Senegal, and 27 cents in Burkina Faso, among other countries.
Nonetheless, he bemoaned the fact that despite the government’s best efforts to make power accessible and inexpensive for Nigerians, many common customers and even essential government entities fail to pay their bills on time.
Sulyman Abdulaziz, the managing director of Transmission Company of Nigeria, expressed similar regrets, claiming that recent disconnections of the electricity distribution companies in Kaduna and Kano from the national grid were caused by the high rate of electricity bill defaults by essential government agencies.
He further said that even though they had been briefly reconnected, they still had to pay TCN within the 60-day grace period.
The committee’s chairman, Senator Gabriel Suswam, and other members, including senators Adamu Aliero and Yusuf Yusuf, proposed alternatives, including the Ministry of Finance deducting power costs from the source.
The large debt accumulated by the DISCOs from unpaid energy bills, notably that of Kaduna and Kano, is one of the grievances voiced by them, according to Senator Suswam.
According to the DISCOs’ formal complaint, the biggest offenders were state governments, educational institutions, and military units all around the nation, he claimed.
