The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has warned that the sector will be grounded in the next three months if the new electricity tariff is not implemented.
The minister stated this while appearing before the Senate committee on power Monday.
The committee, led by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, had rejected the new electricity tariff increase by the National Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC.
But Mr Adelabu appealed for the understanding of Nigerians.
He said: “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.”
He said the sum of $10 billion is needed annually for the next ten years to revive the nation’s power sector and nip in the bud the challenges bedevilling it.
“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,” he said.
The minister also said the inability of the government to pay outstanding N2.9 trillion subsidy was due to limited resources, hence the need to evolve measures to sustain the sector.
In their remarks, members of the committee expressed concerns over the suffering of Nigerians, and asked the minister and other key players in the sector to explore other options.
According to them, adequate consultations were not made before the tariff increase, stressing palliatives would have been provided in the process.
“What Nigerians wanted was a solution to the issues and ways to ensure liquidity in the sector,”Mr Abaribe said.
