For many Nigerians, the voodoo Multi Year Tariff Order 2 (MYTO II) introduced by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) last year, under which electricity tariff will be increased yearly, has become an untold burden. Perhaps, the fraudulent electricity tariff annual increment in a regime of persisting epileptic electricity supply and total power failure sometimes is one of the dividends of democracy Nigerians were promised. Most low income and poverty stricken families are now chastised by ‘estimated’ or ‘coded’ electric bills running into hundreds of thousands of naira for electricity they scarcely consumed. Instead of sincerely addressing the plight of Nigerians who poverty has driven to the precipice (of the country’s over 162 million people, more than half the population, about 61 percent are acclaimed to be wretched and living on less than $1 a day), a grossly insensitive NERC, is beating its war chest with threats of further increases in electricity tariff. Yet governments are saddled with the bounden duties of not just the security of citizens (protection of life and property); but the promotion of the welfare of the governed. Most unfortunate is the recent report credited to the power minister, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, that the extortion is justified. The statement will be revisited later by this writer.
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