The Federal Government claimed on Thursday that Nigeria had the lowest energy usage cost and the highest consumer default rate worldwide.
When the Senate Committee on Power had an interactive session with Engineer Abubakar Aliyu, the Minister of State for Power, and the leaders of several agencies in the electricity sector, it made this submission.
The minister cited Nigeria’s Federal Government’s substantial subsidy of power as the reason for the low cost of electricity use.
He provided evidence for his assertion by comparing the price of energy in Nigeria to that of its neighbors.
According to Aliyu, Nigeria has the lowest electricity costs in the world, particularly for gas-powered electricity, 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, 27 cents in Burkina Faso, etc.
He noted that many common customers, and even important government entities, fail to pay their bills on time, regretting that the government is doing everything it can to make energy accessible and inexpensive for Nigerians.
In a similar vein, Engineer Sulyman Abdulaziz, Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), expressed regret over the recent disconnections of the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) in Kaduna and Kano from the national grid due to a high rate of electricity bill defaults by important government agencies.
He continued by saying that even if they had been briefly reconnected, they still had to pay TCN within the 60-day grace period by using the impacted DisCos.
The senators offered their ideas for a solution in response to the minister and agency heads’ descriptions of the various issues in the electricity industry.
Senator Gabriel Suswam, the committee’s chairman, and other members, including Senators Adamu Aliero and Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf, among others, proposed that the Ministry of Finance remove money from these organisations’ electrical bills at the source.
Suswan said that one of the grievances voiced by the DisCos, notably those in Kaduna and Kano, is the enormous debt they have accumulated from customers who have not paid their power bills.
He claimed that the written complaint submitted by DisCos specifically named state administrations, educational institutions, and military formations across the country.
