While Band A customers across the 11 DISCOS in the country are paying over N200 per unit for electricity supply, customers under Aba Power Limited are enjoying less.
The Managing Director of the company, Ugo Opiegbe has said 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),
Aba Power Ltd has adjusted its electricity tariff, according to a statement issued on Thursday by the company’s spokesman, C. Don Adinuba.
The company noted that this is almost two months after the other 11 electricity distribution companies (DisCos) in Nigeria increased their tariff for Band A customers due to the prevailing economic situation in Nigeria.
The Managing Director, Aba Power Ltd, Ugo Opiegbe, was quoted to have confirmed the tariff increment for Aba Power Ltd customers to newsmen.
He explained 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.
He added that 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 electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to increase their tariff from N66KWh to N225KWh for Band A customers who are said to make up 15% of electricity users.
However, President Bola Tinubu in early May ordered its reduction to N206.80KWh.
Opiegbe said: “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.”
The statement noted that a former Minister of Power, Prof Nnaji 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 inaugurated on February 26 on behalf of President Bola Tinubu.
It added that 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.
ECAN Southeast Zonal Chairman, Engineer Joe Ubani, and the Secretary, Comrade Chris Okpara, were quoted to have said: “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.”
A former Senior Manager with the defunct National Electricity Corporation of Nigeria (NEPA), Engineer Cliff Eneh, who used to work with the Texas Power and Light Corporation in the United States, was quoted to have 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.”
