Nigeria, under the superintending command of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as president, has become a land of goners. Fuel subsidy is gone! Purchasing power of citizens is gone. Travelling by air is virtually gone. Many multi-national manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies are gone. What is called electricity subsidy is now gone. Confidence in the judicial system is largely gone. Peace of mind is gone. Even ECOWAS, as it used to be known, is gone……It is only a matter of time before most ordinary Nigerians will be gone, as well.
For all that, President Tinubu feels a sense of accomplishment. He has been found, lately, declaring that things are getting better in Nigeria. It must be, at his corner of the country.
Rarely do you find a president, elected by popular mandate, taking such policy trajectory as Tinubu does. His policy choices are often diametrically opposed to the yearning and preferences of the majority, but he does not seem to care. One of two factors must be at play in the making of his policy posture. It is either that he is a very courageous man, exceptionally courageous, to the point of self-immolation, for ideas he believes in, or he has been made to accept that his survival in office is dependent on severing every connection to sensitivity to his environment. Again, it is possible that he came to the conclusion, on arriving the presidency, that in truth, he does not owe any obligatory appreciation to majority of Nigerians.
It is doubtful, going by his utterances in the past, that the present policy inclinations of Bola Tinubu as president, represent what he always believed in. Circumstances, bothering on the need for validation, may have driven him into the embrace of the Bretton Woods institutions. How so happy those institutions often are, to exert their yoke on hapless economies and afflicted Third World leaders.
The outrageous hike of the electricity tariff last week, may have been a cruel strike on Nigerians, especially against the backdrop of the raw deal they have already received from The Tinubu presidency since its inception in May 2023. The truth, however, is that the removal of the so-called electricity subsidy is consistent with the doctrine of those Tinubu must listen to. His submission to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund [IMF] is total, with little or no room for deviation. What IMF prescribes, Tinubu does.
Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, was apparently saying what he must have heard from his boss, when he alerted Nigeria’s after last week’s jerking up of the electricity tariff, that further upward reviews should be expected. The Rehoboam-disposition of President Tinubu and his lieutenants clearly tells Nigerians what they are up against.
An increase of 240 per cent on electricity supply tariff, such as the Tinubu government visited on Nigerians last week, is a very uncommon phenomenon, by any assessment. It is not a step a government that truly aims to grow an economy takes. No rational economic management model raises tariff in any critical sector by such a wild margin. Where does this new tariff leave manufacturers, SMEs on which a lot of hope is placed for the revival of productivity in the economy etc? Such, however, is the prescription IMF offers African leaders who come their way.
Already the Tinubu government has removed fuel subsidy and heaven did not fall. Only the economy contracted. The government proceeded to give the Naira a rude shake, sending inflation rate to the stratosphere. Again, heaven did not fall. Just the standard of living of Nigerians declined drastically. Now, they have turned to the electricity sector. Of course, it will not be Tinubu’s last strike at the root of the economy, as long as IMF lives. An American was reported recently in Washington DC declaring Tinubu a man of courage, for doing what no American president could try in his country. That must be a tribute.
As part of the media propaganda accompanying the hike in electricity tariff last week, which increase was announced by the Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission [NERC], with immediate effect and without warning or preparation, a mishmash of supporting statistics was thrown into the public arena. The slant of the message did not depart from the usual style of over two decades ago, when government pitched to convince Nigerians on the need to increase the pump price of petrol. In those days, when government still believed it had an obligation to convince the citizenry before taking critical public policy decisions, there was the weak comparison that a bottle of soft drink was costlier than a litre of fuel, therefore, price of petrol could do with an upward review. That was then.
Government in Nigeria has, of course, grown more imperial, more audacious and very disdainful of the citizenry, so who needs to launch any campaign to convince anybody before hiking tariff on electricity supply? All that is required these days is for the president to declare that the subsidy is gone and it is gone.
In the case of electricity subsidy removal last week, a part of the comparative statistics that was thrown into the media to support a fait accompli, was a loose body of facts that said that electricity in South Africa costs N147 per kilowatt per hour (kWh) and N122 per kWh in Calgary, Canada. In Nigeria, the fact sheet said, consumers pay was N68 per kWh. Even as sampling choices, South Africa and Calgary alone couldn’t have yielded any fair representation. Why Calgary?
Even at that, facts also showed that South Africa has a minimum wage of N312, 000. Calgary has a minimum wage of N2.3 million. Nigeria, which now has electricity supply tariff of N225 per kWh, has a minimum wage of N30,000 [roughly 23 US dollars]. Even that paltry amount is yet to be paid by many states. Governments in Nigeria must be manifestly wicked. They seem, infernally assigned to undermine the dignity of man.
It is instructive that the best the Minister of Power Mr. Adelabu could do to lessen the burden and pain of electricity consumers, is to admonish them to learn how to switch off their freezers and air conditioners intermittently, to conserve power.
The quick dumping of the new suffocating electricity tariff on consumers had every mark of a stealth operation by the government. No notice was given, as the law provided. No consultation was held with consumer unions and the organized labour. Boom! Electricity subsidy was gone!
All that Nigerians heard through a NERC press conference on April 3 2024 was that electricity consumers who fall under Band A category will now be paying N225 per kWh instead of the N68 kWh they were paying hitherto. Band A consumers, NERC explained, captures consumers who receive 20 hours of electricity supply daily. This band, the commission said, represents 15 per cent of 12.82 million registered electricity consumers across the country.
Beyond such contentious calibration as only NERC and its associates can carry out, for the sake of imposing high tariff on consumers, the reality is that a search for any cluster of electricity consumers in Nigeria that receive 20 hours of electricity daily, on consistent basis, for say two months,will become the ultimate search. Where will the 20 hours daily supply come from? From the less than 5000 megawatts that is the best output of power generation by the country in recent years? Or from where?
Governments and public agencies in Nigeria have their ways. Unfortunately, these are not known for being protective of the ordinary citizens. The whole concept of differentiating bands of electricity consumers, in a setting of overall poor and grossly inadequate power supply, does not appear to have any other purpose beyond providing a new matrix for exploiting consumers. In the final analysis, the distinction between Band A and other bands will eventually blur out, leading to higher billing of all the categories. Just mark it, sooner than later, Band A, B, C and D will end up paying stiff tariffs for poor power supply. Beyond the initial “gragra” motivated by the need to justify the increase in tariff, no electricity consumer in Nigeria, is assured of receiving 20 hours of power supply daily over a stretch of time. Mark it. And that does to count collapse of the national grid.