Dons Eze
NIGERIANS GROAN OVER HIGH ELECTRICITY BILLS
When the Federal Government announced in September that it would start paying the proposed minimum wage of N70, 000, with a promise to pay civil servants the areas from July and August, not many Nigerians were excited about the news.
And the reasons were obvious, one of them being the recent hike in electricity bill.
A recent report quoting the FIJ calculation clearly indicated that average minimum wage earners spend at least 57.3 percent of their salaries on electricity bills if they use only seven appliances for a month.
The FIJ report noted that while the wage increase was a good development for workers, the cost of living has rendered the wage increase almost insignificant.
The report spotlights the cost of electricity alone and its impact on workers’ wages.
According to a National Income, Salaries and Wages Commission (NISWC) document, civil servants under the Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure would earn N930,000 per annum. This means that a minimum wage earner would go home with a salary of about N77, 500. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) announced a 300 percent increase in electricity tariff for those in the B and A service category in April.
According to the Vice Chairman of the NERC, Musliu Oseni, the tariff hike meant that customers who formerly paid N66 per kilowatt per hour would now pay N225 for the same unit of electricity.
In the announcement, the NERC also said that only users in the band A service category, about 15 percent of the entire customer population, would be affected.
Surprisingly, a few months after the announcement, Nigerians were faced with flagrant and unsolicited transfer to Band A service category without prior notice.
Some people protested the move, while others took to social media to vent their anger and frustrations.
Decrying the move on his X handle, a financial expert, Joe Abah wrote: “I have confirmation that @aedcelectricity has now put me in Band A with no notice at all. So, N100,000 electricity top-up now lasts just seven days. I have been paying. Who has a gadget that can help me monitor whether I am getting a minimum of 20 hours of light a day, please?”
A small scale business owner, Chidi Adum equally lamented, saying, “How can you want to squeeze us to pay such (a) ridiculous tariff? And switch us to Band A without notice?”
According to Ayodele Dipo, a civil servant with the Lagos State Government, who lives around Amuwo Odofin area of the state, he was taken to Band A without notice and ever since that development, almost all his earnings have been consumed by electricity bills.
He said: “Before this latest development, if I buy N5000 credit, I will use it for two to three months. But since I was taken to Band A, the N5000 doesn’t last for one week.
“At least in the last 20 days, I have bought N5000 credit thrice. You can imagine the effect on my income.
“In fact, it has made a mess of the new minimum wage. The government should do something about this. When you include the cost of fuel to that, you will understand the plight of low income earners like us.”
Kenneth Enobong, a security guard with one of the security firms in Lagos, also lamented that the new minimum wage of N70,000 has not impacted on him in any positive way, instead things seem to have worsened.
“It is like these electric distribution companies were waiting for the new minimum wage because with this recent hike in electricity bill, the minimum wage doesn’t take us anywhere.
“Some of us have chosen to remain in darkness most of the days because our salary cannot cope with the electricity bills and other bills.
“We need to feed our families, take care of the health needs of our families including catering for children’s school fees and other bills.
“So, in the order of priorities, electricity can wait but food can’t wait; health needs can’t wait, and sometimes, you may not want to stop your children from going to school because you want to enjoy electricity.
“So, that is the predicament we have found ourselves in and we are pleading with the concerned authorities to do something to reverse the hike. It is killing us; the new minimum wage can’t do anything,” he stated.
Also, a cleaner with the Nigeria Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, Mrs Gladys Ameh decried the hike in the electricity bill, saying it is taking a serious toll on her monthly salary so much that she has not felt the impact of the new minimum wage of N70,000.
She said: “I don’t know what they want us to do in this country. How can we use almost the whole of our monthly salary to pay for electricity bills?
“The new minimum wage is not even enough; in fact it would have been better to leave us with the old minimum wage and old electricity rate, instead of all these Greek gifts.
The government should do something about the electricity bill if they want the new minimum wage to have any impact on some of us who are low income earners.”
