 We'll work with the breakfast and plus TV Africa. Time for us to look at, you know, electricity tariff and, you know, conversations surrounding it. Nika Gule would join us this morning, I mean, to make sense of some of the consents that have been raised by electricity consumers. However, electricity consumers in the federal capital territory, that's the FCT and other parts of the country, have decried the increase in tariff by the electricity distribution companies, discourse, the consumers say the increase in electricity tariff is unjustifiable given the unreliable and epileptic power supply across the country. They've also described as annoying the secret increase in tariff. I think that you only discover that there was an increase when you recharge your meter. This is for meat at customers because, I mean, you still have on meat at customers. Information available shows that the Nigerian electricity regulatory commission approved a minor tariff order review for December 2022. According to the review order of Abuja Disco, saying that was made public, it was reported that it issued the adjustment to power tariff on November 28 and directed discourse to implement the charges from December the 1st, 2022. Now, BAN-A customers will pay as much as 81.1 per kilowatt and BAN-A customers would receive minimum of 20 hours of power supply a day, which will, you know, they'll have to pay between 66.95 Naira and 81.18 Naira per kilowatt. That's in the hour. Now, BAN-B customers who enjoy a minimum of 16 hours of power supply a day will now pay between 63.35 Naira and 76.15 Naira per kilowatt. That's, you know, per hour. Now, and in all, the Nigerian Ministry of State for power, Godi, Jedi, Agba, and all the stakeholders have reportedly refused to confirm an electricity tariff increase that have occurred. I mean, that has occurred. Now, it feels like there's been a categorization of consumers. So you have BAN-A, you know, you have BAN-B and all of that. And depending on how many hours, but however, there's an increase. Nick Aguile joins the conversation this morning. Nick, it's good to have you join us. I'd like you to show your thoughts on this. What do you make of this whole, I mean, scenario? And do you think that this tariff that has been increased can be justified with the power supply that Nigerians are getting across different parts of the country? Thank you so very much, Merci for that question. And my direct answer is that it is totally unjustifiable. You see, I am in a position where I pay electricity tariffs in two countries because of my dual residency. So I pay electricity bills in the UK, where I live with my family. I also pay electricity bills in Nigeria, where I visit now very often. And I can tell Nigerians for free that Nigerians are paying way too much for electricity already. You know, in the UK, we have what you call dual fuel. Dual fuel in the sense that every home has gas and electricity packed into it. You need a gas for cooking and you need a gas for heating when it's wintertime like now. And then you have electricity. The money that are paid for this dual fuel in the UK is less than what people are paying as electricity tariffs in Nigeria. By the time you add the fact that people have supplemental power solutions, either as generators or inverters or solar or some other thing, if you add the cost of all of that, Nigerians are actually paying way too much for electricity that is not being delivered. Because the cost that I'm comparing with, which is the UK cost, where I also pay electricity bills, is for 24-7 electricity supply. Specifically, I would like to tell our viewers that I have lived in the UK for nearly 20 years. And since I have been in that place, electricity has not blinked for even a minute, a second. It has not blinked. It has not blinked. So at any point in time, you switch on your lights. The lights are where they will come on. And there are people who cook with electricity and also sorts of things. Electricity is steady 24-7 years. People are paying less for that than in Nigeria where you'll be lucky if you see hours of electricity per day. And the problem here is very simple. By global standards, you are expected to generate and supply 1,000 megawatts of electricity to 1 million people. So as Nigeria is populated by 200 million plus people, if we go by global standards, we should be supplying 200,000 megawatts of electricity per day. What are we doing? 3,000. So if the supply is short, the price will go up. So this hike, this electricity tariff hike that we are experiencing, is resulting from supply deficit. That is the canon of the matter. The more electricity we generate and supply, the less the unit cost of doing that. So that is just what it is. And that is my initial view on this subject. What are your thoughts on the lack of communication to the public about where things are right now? Lack of explanation because Meso is talking about the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour. Not many people are really familiar with what is being charged and what they are paying. Nobody has written a letter to me as an electricity consumer. Nobody has sent me an email as an electricity consumer. All I know is that the 5,000 that used to last me one week or more, but at least one week now lasts me sometimes three days to four days. Some of the posts are paid by consumers in this country. If they tell you what they are paying now, their electricity bill would actually be higher than what they pay for rent if you add it up for the 12 months in a year. So it's just like the fuel supply situation. We know for a fact that the NMDPRA met with members of IPMAN and directed them to increase their charges or the cost of fuel per litre. We know for a fact that NNPC filling stations in Abuja and Lagos are selling higher than the approved pump price. But they are not telling Nigerians that they've increased it. No information. So what are your thoughts on this situation in the electricity sector? Bearing in mind the fact that look at the NERC regulations, the discos are meant to implement increase every year. They call it multi-year tariff or something. Increases periodically. Yes, my thoughts is that this is very sad. This is very sad because there is a maxim that says the consumer is the king, but not in Nigeria. In Nigeria, consumers are made to become beggars, to be queen of for everything, to be looking for photos and services with their money in hand and people cost scarcity of these terms. So it is very sad that this lack of communication by the electricity companies to consumers to inform them of tariff hikes. I mean, it bothers on, I don't want to say criminality, but definitely it is morally wrong and it doesn't show any good business ethics for you to surprise your customers with price increases. I mean, any decent organization should be able to inform customers and say, look, this is the picture on the table because of A, B, and C, we have to increase prices so that we can serve you better. But to increase prices through the backdoor electricity, backdoor price increases. A few backdoor price increases, as you have rightly mentioned. It just takes the consumer for granted. And I tell you the reason why this is the case. In Nigeria, we have electricity generation and supply transmission and supply at three layers. That is the generation, the transmission and the distribution. In the UK, we are also live, they have it at four layers. That is generation, transmission, distribution and retail. Now, at retail, you can switch your electricity supplier. So, if you live in a kejah for instance, you don't have to be bogged down with only a kejah distribution company. No, there will be about 5, 10 electricity suppliers. And if any of the suppliers is not treating you well, you just with a phone call, you will call and switch your supplier from one company to the other. With that, there is full competition at that retail point. And the companies now know that if we don't treat our customers right, if we don't pass information to our customers, if we don't respond to our customers needs, like transformer is down and we didn't go there to sort it out, the customers are going to switch their electricity supply to another company. Perhaps that is one thing that is needed in Nigeria, to create that four layer in the electricity supply chain. So that would you have the ability to be able to switch our electricity suppliers and put these companies that are taking consumers for granted on the spot. Nenek, just before Mercy comes in, what I said is, I mean, I won't be fair if I don't tell you that we're having where reside in Lagos, having next to constant electricity, if they take it at all, maybe for almost, I think, more than 18 hours of electricity a day. Mercy, don't be, don't be, don't look at me like that. So if we're seeing increase improvement in power supply, I mean, I had to use a generator, it's on constant, perfect current, you know, we have low current in Nigeria or like you guys in the UK. And should we be complaining? If we have 18 hours of electricity supply in Nigeria, like you are enjoying, I mean, you must be one of these privileged, you know, but don't ask me for the area, I won't tell you on national TV. I wish I'm like you, you know, I wish I'm in an area like yours, you know, so you can have 18 hours. If we have 18 hours of guaranteed electricity supply in Nigeria, one thing that is going to happen, 3,000 megawatts to 200 million people is not going to be able to do that. Yeah. So we need to, as a matter of urgency, increase our generating capacity to at least 40,000 megawatts. Now with 40,000 megawatts, these are the things that will happen. Number one, we will not be able to supply more electricity within that realm of 18 hours to Nigerians in more places than just in a few places like in these privileged areas in Lagos. Number two, to supply, to move from the current 3,000 megawatts to at least 40,000 megawatts. It means we're going to build new power plants. And building on new power plants, we create jobs, you know, and then we're going to have new transmission lines. We're going to have new distribution centers. And all of those things are going to create jobs for our youth who are just working about endlessly without jobs. There are graduates that have left school for like 10 years, they haven't landed a quality job in their life. But these are the things that will run the economy. Okay. Nick, I'd like you to speak to, you know, the fact that we haven't, I mean, you have mentioned that already, we haven't lived up to our generating capacity, you know, global standards. And also the fact that despite the bailouts by the federal government, as of, you know, the time that we're looking at 1.5 to trillionaire, to this discourse, we're still having issues with power supply. I mean, the government is still giving bailout to the discourse, unless we're going to say that that's on paper. But yes, so my question is, what exactly is going on, even when, you know, the government is supporting this sector 1.5 trillion as a, you know, August 2022? The direct answer to that question is the fact that Nigeria has already undertaken a humongous privatization process in the telecom sector. I cannot stop using the telecom sector as an example. Yeah, because it is a privatization that we did well. And we are seeing the dividends. We have never heard that government is subsidizing or supporting the emptiness of this world in Nigeria. Never. We have never heard government giving them any support. Why? Because the privatization was done right. The privatization of telecoms was done such that they were regional telecom operators who already had strong balance sheets and expertise and experience and the technology to deliver telecoms to Nigeria. And that is why the MTN, the ATES, and the ATES gave me. These are already existing telecom operators and they were giving the licenses and we can see the results. Compare that to the power sector. The 11 discourse that we have, all of them, which one was given to a company that was already in the electricity sector somewhere in the world? Of them, the entire 11 discourse were given to politically exposed persons. We know them. We know the owners. And they have no experience in the power sector. They don't have the money. They don't even have the technology to do this thing. And that is why after privatizing, government is still taking our money and giving to them. And as government is pumping more money into them, private entities or what they are supplying to us is darkness. So what needs to happen? And I direct this to the incoming government because we are tired of advising President Buhari. I mean, he has three months or so to go. He is writing his handover notes. But the incoming government, what we are just advising them to do is that electricity is the lifeblood of any modern economy. Without electricity is like a doctor wants a body to thrive without blood. That doctor's work is in vain. So recognizing that with electricity, this our economy will not do well. Once they come into office in May this year, they should tackle this electricity conundrum head on by unbundling the sector. You mentioned about privatization. Now, we privatize the generating companies. But the government is holding onto the transmission, which is the middle layer. And then we privatize the discourse. Now, the generating companies cannot generate more than transmission can carry. In fact, some of the system collapses that we see is as a result of the generating companies trying to push too much power into the transmission network. And it just collapses the system. So if the generating companies cannot invest to generate more, because there is no transmission to carry it, and distribution can only distribute what transmission has given them, why is government not sitting on that transmission? And we have a government that is boring to pay salaries. They don't have the money to expand the transmission network. So the next government should unbundle the sector should leave the gencos there, should hand over transmission to a world, a global electricity supplier, like same the manitobas of this world, so that they can bring money the way the MTS grow money, and just give us a transmission capacity that can carry like 50,000 megawatts in the first instance. And in another four years, we should be talking about 100,000 megawatts of transmission capacity. With that, the discourse will not have enough electricity to distribute to Nigeria. And you know, as we distribute more electricity, so the unit cost will be falling. So this is what the next government must do. If we don't do this, the Nigeria economy will never do well, regardless of who is managing it. Thank you, Nick. I think what remains right now is that Nigerians are going through the harshest of economic times. And it is at this time, without any information that the government has sanctioned an increase in tariffs by the discourse. We'll wait to see if they will, hey, they will tell us anything about it. Thank you very much for your time, Nick. Thank you. My last word on that is that you remember that we had one NEPA, one NEPA, one managing director. Now, we have 11 discourse, 11 managing directors, 23 gencos, 23 managing directors, and a transmission, all these things on the same 3,000 megawatts. So you can see that what Nigerians are paying is at the additional cost of setting up all these companies with managing directors, executive directors, and that's what we are paying for, because the output has not increased. So we are just in a box, but let Nigeria come out to vote. On the 35th of February, we will take Nigeria back. And things like this electricity we are talking about will become a thing of the past. Hopefully. Thank you very much. All right, Nick, thank you so much for joining us this morning on the breakfast and plus TV Africa. We have to go. We wish you a very beautiful day. I wish you a happy day as well. Thank you and have a nice day. It seems pretty bright where it is. The sun is shining brighter in Makodi. That's the size of our package. I will be giving a cage of electrical medicine to find out if I'm paying more. That is officially. But you can follow us on social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube plus TV Africa. Second channel on YouTube is plus TV Africa lifestyle. My name is Kofi Bartel, so we're back tomorrow. And I am Messy Apokor. Do have a great morning. We're joining the newsroom at 9 o'clock for the news group. Please stay with us.