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The Nigeria Electricity Regulatory Commis sion (NERC) on Monday assured that the proposed tariff hike, now suspended, wouldn’t affect poor electricity customers, if okayed.

In his presentation to the Senate Committee on Power at the fee’s Head office in Abuja, the NERC Chairman, Prof. James Momoh, advised the lawmakers who have been in their oversight function {that a} mechanism had been put in place to soak up the masses of the adverse effects of the hike.

He stated: “It is not going to affect the poor. We’ll make sure that the downtrodden and the people you feel for at the moment will not be affected by any increase we will be bringing forth.

“It will be based on the hours of service and the quality of power available there. We don’t want the poor to subsidise the payment of the rich. In other words, we must make sure that the poor are not sacrificed in the process of tariff increase.”

The Committee Chairman, Senator Gabriel Suswan, urged the commission to handle the tariff increase with warning due to the financial hardship it could inflict on the people.

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He advised Momoh that the Senate is against the proposed tariff increase, however having viewed that almost all Nigerians couldn’t even feed themselves for the time being owing to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commission has “to make haste slowly” about the tariff.