Human rights lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Femi Falana, on Sunday, alleged that the Federal Government stopped payment of electricity subsidy in 2022.
Falana, in a statement made available to our correspondent, noted that on March 23, 2021, the Federal Government announced its plan to end electricity subsidy by the end of that year.
The lawyer quoted the Special Adviser to former President Muhammadu Buhari on Infrastructure, Ahmad Zakari, as saying “We plan to eliminate subsidy by the end of the year. People will say if you eliminate subsidies, you will have poor people pay more. But our argument is that the only reason the power prices in Nigeria are high is because we don’t generate enough. If you generate 10GW of power, tariff will be half of what it costs. So, keeping the prices very low is not the approach, but delivering adequate power.”
Similarly in the statement, Falana noted that on March 12, 2022, the former Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, disclosed that the Federal Government had quietly removed electricity subsidy. The lawyer said Ahmed made the disclosure at a virtual meeting of African Finance Ministers and the International Monetary Fund.
