Mr President – This is Heartless!
A recent energy audit in ABU estimated the electricity consumption of the University to be about 1,629,936 kW in a month. This estimate was very close to the monthly energy consumption when students were in session. When u multiply that by ₦225, It will give u ₦366,735,600 electricity bill per month. In one year, the electricity bill will be ₦4.4 billion per annum. The annual electricity bill of ABU will jump from about ₦1.2 billion to 4.4 billion naira & the bill must be paid. So, who will pay for it ?
ABU is said to have about 50 thousand students. If u share the bills per student, that will be ₦88,000 per both undergraduate & postgraduate students. The municipal charge paid for this academic session by the students to take care of electricity bills, water supply & sanitation was ₦15,000 per student. That amounts to about ₦750 million for a year. An amount that was below the electricity bill for 2024. So, for universities like ABU to cope with the bills, they have to explore the goodwill of the few that have the university at heart.
With the new tariff, the electricity bill from April to December 2024 has tripled. It will be about ₦3.3 billion as against ₦997 million that the university envisaged for the 9 months. Who will pay for it ? The non-constituted university councils or the acting council (the Education Minister) will figure out the over-tripled electricity bill from April to December 2024 since u can’t bill the students in the middle of the session.
However, the message is that, the new tariff will most likely affect the Student’s Registration fee for the next Academic Session. The charges from municipal services may likely increase by ₦70,000. The staff living in the quarter should also get ready for ₦225 per kWh bill.
Even the NLC made no comment on the insane tariff that is counterproductive because they believe the dummy that it won’t affect ordinary Nigerians. Before u also swallow the dummy like NLC, I just want to let u know that, the new electricity tariff will at least increase the fees of ur child in public universities.
I learnt that, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, is angry that, Electricity is affordable to Nigerians & more angry that, we let our fridges work all day. Are fridges meant to be turned off ? He has vowed to make electricity not affordable for us to run our fridges all day. The typical Elitist attitude. He is imagining why others should have access to what should be exclusively theirs.* That is not surprising after all; he is an accountant. It’s all about the figures. They hardly think of the economic implications.
We can excuse him. The minister is an accountant who spent most of his career in the Banking Industry before venturing into politics. He has zero experience in the management of the Power Sector. He is probably yet to realise that, the Power Sector is beyond just crediting & debiting the Balance Sheet. I have not heard him speak about the Slave Wage paid to Nigerian workers. What we are paid does not affect him.
I lived in the UK for 3 years & in Norway for 2 years. For these 5 years, in the houses I occupied, the fridges worked for every second that I spent there. Electricity was more than affordable even from my stipend as a PhD student. Government appointees should think before they speak. They should stop being sadistic & allow Nigerians to breathe.
So amazing that, the President can just stand up to announce Fuel Subsidy removal with immediate effect without any committee meeting. He floated the Naira without a committee meeting. It’s been 10 months now since the Subsidy Removal & the Committee is still meeting (1 billion naira meetings) but yet to come up with a new minimum wage.
Then, while waiting for the minimum Wage to cushion the effect of Fuel Subsidy removal, the government just decided to increase the electricity tariff by over 300% with immediate effect without any committee meeting.
So easy to take from the people but giving to the people needs months of committee meetings.
That is heartless.
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