Happening Now: Labour, Civil Societies shut down Abuja over electricity tariff increase

The organized labour in concert with civil society organizations made good their threat to protest against the 45 per cent hike in electricity tariffs as hordes of protesting workers grounded business activities in Abuja on Monday.

Kicking off the peaceful demonstration from the Labour House at the Central Business Area, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Trade Union Congress, TUC, and several other groups first had a whistle stop at the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, AEDC, located at Wuse Zone 4.

They bore placards with various inscriptions such as ; “Don’t increase electricity Tariff,” “Stop estimated billing,” “NERC and DISCOS obey court order, “Give us prepaid meters “We need light not darkness,” “We cannot pay more for darkness. ”

While addressing the crowd, the President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba stated that the time of taking people for granted is over, that billing all over the world is based on what you consume. He maintained that there must be a stop to the impunity as the regulatory agency is expected to protect the interest of consumers.

“President Buhari must stand with the people as he promised Nigerians and he must revisit the privatisation of power sector. We would not allow where you ‘Genco and Disco’ to exploit Nigerians, and there must be an end to the estimated billing,” he asserted.

The NLC President decried the outrageous increase in the Tariff as a fraud, asserting that it would be rejected by Nigerians. He said that due process in the extant laws for such increment was not followed in consonance with section 76 of the Power Sector Reform Act, 2005 as there has been no significant improvement in service delivery.

He further argued that the fact is that most consumers are not metered as required by the privatization Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, signed on November 1, 2013, which stipulates that within 18 months gestation period, all consumers are to be metered.

While responding on behalf of the distribution company, its Head of Public Relations, Ahmed Shekarau told the protesters that the company would provide 100,000 prepaid meters free of charge to consumers, and same would repeat in the next five years.

Meanwhile, thousands of the protesters are already heading towards the headquarters of the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Agency, NERC, and promised to mobilise to the National Assembly where a formal letter would be handed over to the leadership.