The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has one again assured Nigerians that only customers enjoying up to 20 hours of power daily would pay the new electricity tariff.
The minister stated this on Monday while appearing before the Senate Committee on Power, for a one-day investigative hearing on the need to halt the proposed increase in electricity tariff by eleven successor electricity distribution companies amid the biting economic situation in Nigeria.
According to him, government had introduced a new policy to salvage the power sector, assuring Nigerians that the pains being experienced at the moment were temporary.
The Minister also stated that the Federal Government would have paid the sum of ₦2.9 trillion to subsidize electricity in 2024 if the tariff was not reviewed.
Earlier, Chairman of the committee, Senator Eyinnnaya Abaribe had raised the question of how customers were migrated from the previous customer classes of Residential (R1, R2, R3), Commercial (C1, C2) and Demand (D1, D2), to different bands.
Abaribe requested to know if the band classification was under the provisions of the law.
He also raised more questions on how the parameters differentiate between regions and areas, citing a portion of the act that highlighted the need for non-discriminatory distribution.
The development comes on the heels of the recent increase in electricity tariffs for consumers in the Band A category by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)
The commission had increased the tariff paid by Band A customers from N68/KiloWatt per hour to N225