The 2023 presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Peter Obi, has decried the increased electricity tariff for Band A consumers in the country.
The former Governor of Anambra State said the Bola Tinubu administration should have been strategic about the increase and considered the end game.
He stated this in an interview with journalists in Gombe State shortly after donating a borehole to the ram market in Tike Pantami on Sunday.
Obi lamented that the recent increase in electricity tariff by the government is ill-timed and would add to the pains of Nigerians.
The former Governor of Anambra State also charged the federal government to tax rich Nigerians to provide cheap electricity for the poor.
He said, “We should all think it through, and see how we can provide a remedy. How can we deal with it, especially as it concerns the poor areas?
Everywhere in the world, those living in Band A areas pay more while those in rural areas are subsidised. That is how it works.
What we’ve been doing is going round communities in the country, and talking to people to learn and understand about their livelihood, and to see if there’s any little thing I can help with.
The solution electricity tariff hike is very simple, you can increase the tariff for those in areas where they can afford it. We need to do a lot in the area of power generation because it has taken so long. But we have to take into consideration that the majority of Nigerians are suffering.
So we need to support people in those areas to be able to live and be able to produce something. When they start to produce something, we are pushing them out of poverty and that’s where my theory of moving from consumption to production comes in.
We can’t tax people first, we need to support small businesses and ensure that this tariff is not spread across the same level –for the big and for the small.”
News360 Info recalls the Federal Government, via the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), on April 3rd, approved an increase of 300 per cent in electricity tariff for some consumers as revealed by the Vice Chairman of NERC, Musiliu Oseni, in Abuja.
