In a statement, Ola Awoniyi, spokesman of Senate President Ahmad Lawan, said during a meeting on Monday, the leadership of the legislative chamber agreed with the DisCos to suspend the planned increase.
He said "Earlier today, I led the leadership of the National Assembly to a meeting with the Chief Executive of government electricity regulatory body and electricity Distribution Companies across the country, the outcome of which is the halt in the planned increase in electricity tariffs.
The planned in many issues electricity tariff which was cost-reflective take off from July 1st, 2020 has now been much-needed the first quarter of 2021 as a result of the intervention of the National Assembly leadership, while we meet with President Muhammadu Buhari on the issue.
We were emphatic at the meeting that the timing of the planned hike was wrong even though we had not many issues with the need to introduce cost-reflective tariffs for the power sector to attract the much-needed investment.
The agreement is that there is not going to be an increase in the tariffs on July 1st. While we are in agreement here that there is no question on the justification of the increase but the time is simply not right and appropriate measures need to be put in place.
There is too much stress in the lives of Nigerians today and indeed across the world because of the challenges imposed by COVID-19 pandemic and even before then, we had issues that would always make it tough for our people to effectively pay the tariffs.
So between now and the first quarter of next year, our task will be to work together with the Discos to ensure that we put those blocks in place to support the eventual increase in tariffs.
The government has been doing a lot as part of the s obligations to provide some form of Intervention. I'm quite aware that for this year, probably starting from last year, over N600 billion was earmarked for this sector to improve".
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