Femi Falana Claims Federal Government Removed Electricity Subsidy Payments In 2022

Human rights lawyer and senior advocate of Nigeria Femi Falana claimed on Sunday that the federal government had removed electricity subsidy in 2022, during former President Muhammadu Buhari's administration.

Buhari stepped down from his position last year when President Bola Tinubu took over office on May 29, 2023.

Falana explained that in a statement issued on March 23, 2021, the Buhari-led government announced that there would be electricity subsidy removal by the end of that year.

He quoted the Special Adviser to former President Muhammadu Buhari on Infrastructure Ahmad Zakari, who said, "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," Punch reported.

"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, the tariff will be half of what it costs. So, keeping the prices very low is not the approach, but delivering adequate power," Zakari said, as per Falana.

He further recalled another statement issued on March 12, 2022, by the former minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed, disclosing that the government had quietly removed electricity subsidy.

"We are cleaning up our subsidies. We had a setback; we were to remove the fuel subsidy by July this year but there was a lot of pushback from the polity," Falana quoted Ahmed in his statement.

He added, "We have elections coming and because of the hardship that companies and citizens went through during the COVID-19 pandemic, we just felt that the time was not right, so we pulled back on that. But we have been able to quietly implement subsidy removal in the electricity sector and as we speak, we don't have subsidies in the electricity sector."

Falana went on to question Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu for claiming on Jan. 15 that the "Federal Government still subsidizes electricity because the current tariff DISCOs are allowed to charge is not cost-reflective."

He also noted that last week, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission approved an increase in electricity tariff to N225 ($0.15) per kilowatt-hour from N68.

"Since the Buhari administration had stopped electricity subsidy in 2022, the Federal Government should institute a panel of inquiry to investigate the claim of the Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu that electricity subsidy for 2024 is N3tn," Falana said.

He added, "The inquiry is necessary as arrangements have been concluded by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission to further hike electricity tariffs under the pretext of removing subsidy from the sector."

Falana also said the panel should investigate what happened to the N32 billion that was paid into a private company's account back in 2003 for providing three million prepaid meters to the country.