On April 3, the Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commission approved an increase in electricity tariff for customers under the Band A classification.
Appearing before the senate committee on power on Monday, Adelabu said the federal government could not afford to pay subsidies on power anymore.“The government will be needing about 2.8 trillion to subsidise electricity this year, and we look at the government budget itself, we look at the provision for subsidy, we discover and confirm that the government could not afford to pay,” he said.
“For this sector to be revived, the government needs to spend nothing less than $10 billion annually in the next 10 years. This is because of the infrastructure requirement for the stability of the sector, but the government cannot afford that.“And so we must make this sector attractive to investors and to lenders. So for us to attract investors and investment, we must make the sector attractive, and the only way it can be made attractive is that there must be commercial pricing.