By Seyi Babalola
Almost two months after the other 11 electricity distribution firms in Nigeria increased their tariff for Band A customers due to the prevailing economic situation in the country, Aba Power Ltd has adjusted its tariff.
Its managing director, Ugo Opiegbe, confirmed to newsmen in a telephone interview this morning that Band A Maximum Demand (MD) customers, who receive power for at least 20 hours daily, will now pay between N114.66 and N117.1 per kilowatt hour (KWh), from N109.79 KWh.
For non-MD customers in Band A, their tariff is even lower, pegged at N106.56/kWh.
“It is still the lowest in the country for that category of customers”, Opiegbe declared, contrasting it with rates charged by other electricity firms.
The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had on April 3, 2024, permitted the DisCos to increase their tariff from N66KWh to N225KWh for Band A customers who are said to make up 15% of electricity users. President Bola Tinubu in early May ordered its reduction to N206.80KWh.
“Our Band A MD customers are primarily industrialists who are unfortunately experiencing serious headwinds, and it is because of them that Professor Bart Nnaji, the founder and chairman of the Geometric Power Group, established the 188-MW gas-fired plant in the Osisioma Industrial Layout of Aba”, Opiegbe noted.
Professor Nnaji, a former Minister of Power, was a distinguished professor of manufacturing engineering in the United States before relocating to Nigeria to set up the Aba Independent Power Project, Nigeria’s only integrated electricity group which Vice President Kashim Shettima commissioned on February 26 on behalf of President Bola Tinubu.
The Southeast zone of the Electricity Consumers Association of Nigeria (ECAN) had three weeks ago commended Aba Power, Nigeria’s DisCo which commenced operations only in September 2022, for retaining the 2023 approved tariff structure in nine of the 17 local government areas (LGAs) in Abia where it supplies electricity.
“Yet, this is the only DisCo in the nation that has not benefitted from the trillions of naira paid to others in subsidy since the privatization of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) assets in November 2013”, observed the ECAN Southeast zonal chairman, Engineer Joe Ubani, and the secretary, Comrade Chris Okpara.
Agreeing with the AECN’s position, Engineer Cliff Eneh, a former senior manager with the defunct National Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (NEPA), who used to work with the Texas Power and Light Corporation in the United States, described both Professor Nnaji and Geometric Power as “hugely self-sacrificing”.
He added: “Frankly, they behave like people in a vocation whose mission is to provide affordable, quality, and constant power to the citizens, despite all they have gone through in the last 20 years”.
