President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wabba and the leadership of the organised labour has berated the Federal Government’s resort to international economic indices to determine domestic electricity tariff.
In his remarks, Wabba averred that something was inherently wrong in calculating in United States dollars the cost of the gas used by generation companies (Gencos) in generating electricity in Nigeria. “The current practice violates fundamental economic theory of comparative advantage, especially for a developing economy as ours. Related to this is the calculation of ancillary electricity supply logistics in foreign currencies and transferring same to electricity consumers,” he said. The NLC president said, from the feedback labour has so far got from its representatives in the Technical Committee on the Review of the Electricity Sector, four things stand out in the state of affairs in the electricity sector. He noted that besides the first on foreign currency, the second was the perversity of offloading the cost of electricity capital accumulation on end consumers. He said, “It is tenuous and economically unreasonable for electricity generation and distribution companies to upload the cost of acquiring their equipment and operational facilities to electricity consumers.
