NERC tax power users leaving DisCos services

Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC)

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has unveiled fees payable by large power users before they can exit the services of the 11 Distribution Companies (DisCos).

This is part of the Eligible Customer Regulation of 2017 that allows unsatisfied power users to leave the supply of DisCo and connect to power plants directly through the services of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

James Momoh, said anyone opting out of a DisCo’s service must pay the Competition Transition Charge (CTC).

But the National Coordinator of the Transparency Awareness Group (TANGO), Mallam Ibrahim Isah, in a letter, called on the federal Government and the National Assembly to reverse this guideline as its members provided the power infrastructures to connect to dedicated transmission lines from GenCos without contribution from DisCos.

The letter said they should not be made to pay extra charges by NERC.  MAN had in 2019 asked to become ECs to evacuate the 2,000 megawatts stranded power taunted by GenCos.

“The CTC is to be paid in addition to the Transmission charges being paid to TCN who is a custodian of the 132/33kVa dedicated Transmission Lines. They excluded the major stakeholders.”

The National Assembly has convinced electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to halt the proposed increase in tariff

The National Assembly has convinced electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to halt the proposed increase in tariff for power consumers till the first quarter of 2021

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".