The Nigerian Labour Congress has opposed the new tariff introduced by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, and called for a reverse to the old charges.
The NLC President, Comrade Abdulwaheed Omar, who held a meeting with officials of the electricity commission, said that Nigerians were being exploited and impoverished daily by incessant tariffs despite poor electricity supply.
In an ensuing debate, the labour leadership asked the NERC to scrutinize the challenge facing the country and come out with a solution in the interest of the ordinary Nigerian.
They maintained that the recent increase in electricity tariff without commensurate availability of power was a rip off.
They also noted that in spite of the tariff review – as the regulators admitted – the nation had experienced a shortfall in target from the struggling 4000 megawatts to about 3,400.
The Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, Sam Amadi, provided explanations to justify the review but the labour activists who were grossly unsatisfied with the explanations, said that the meeting scheduled after the increase was simply an abortion before pregnancy.
In his calculation, President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Abdulwaheed Omar, described the entire power arrangement as terribly exploitative.