Many electricity consumers in Nigeria are concerned that increasing tariffs without first improving power supply will not solve the country’s electricity challenges.

The Nigeria Consumer Protection Network has urged the Federal Government to exercise caution, emphasizing that all consumers—regardless of their tariff band—should experience better service before any price hikes.

President of the Nigeria Consumer Protection Network, Kola Olubiyo,
criticized Nigeria’s inability to sustain power generation improvements.

He recalled that in 2013, the country celebrated reaching 5,600 megawatts, but this progress turned out to be short-lived.

According to him, the demand for electricity in Nigeria has remained higher than the supply.

“So, what it means is that an increase in electricity tariffs alone is not a silver bullet solution to the challenges of the power sector,” he cautioned.

Olubiyo warned that Nigeria’s national grid is too fragile to handle a load of 5,800 MW or 6,000 MW without collapsing.

He stressed that despite past claims of progress, the grid remains unstable due to poor infrastructure, lack of investment in transmission, and frequent system failures.

He said, “As I speak to you now, if you attempt to pick a load of 5,800 MW or 6,000 MW, the grid will collapse. I’m speaking to you in my capacity as a member of the Technical Investigative Panel on Power System Collapses.

“So, from the benefit of insight, I’m saying the grid is stagnated, is limited, and is full of inefficiencies. And between 2013 to date, we have 20 years, but our government has sought enormous foreign loans to invest in the grid.”

Olubiyo pointed out that the government still controls the transmission segment of Nigeria’s power sector, mainly to justify securing foreign loans for infrastructure projects.

“Yet, we’ve not been able to even add an additional 400 MW to the 5,600 MW peak that we have achieved, despite a huge amount of money that is not less than $10bn in the last 10 years.

“So, even when this tariff is increased now, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to come with any improvement in power supply. We are talking about having cost recovery when investors put in their money. At the downstream, what cost are we recovering when investors are not investing money?

“Even if the tariff is raised to N1,000 per kilowatt-hour, it’s not going to guarantee service efficiency; it’s not going to guarantee improvement in customer centricity and service delivery. It’s not going to guarantee revenue optimisation.

“Revenue will be jacked up by a two-thirds increase or 300 per cent increase; the revenue figure will be ballooned. But what I’m trying to say in essence is that it’s not going to be commensurate with the service level agreements and improvement in service delivery. Because if you want to share 5,600 MW of stagnated generation growth or capacity among the nation’s population per capita ratio, it’s stagnated. So, increasing tariffs will not translate to a game changer,” he added.

President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Energy, Olu Verheijen, indicated that electricity tariffs might increase in the coming months.

Verheijen stated that while the tariff hike may not reach 65 per cent, the government plans to end electricity subsidies for wealthy consumers.

She explained that the current N200 billion monthly subsidy primarily benefits the richest 25 percent of Nigerians, while lower-income groups receive little to no advantage.