Nigeria Eko DisCo’s director urges MAN to engage power firms, not government, to resolve N29bn tariff dispute

Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has been urged to engage the electricity distribution companies for effective resolution of its N29 billion electricity tariff dispute with the distribution companies.

George Etomi, a director of Eko Electricity Distribution Company, made the call Wednesday in an interview.

According to Etomi, engaging the distribution companies would be the most efficient way of resolving issues around the N29 billion debt owed to the distribution companies by MAN rather than seek government’s intervention, noting that the distribution companies operate in a privatized business environment and as such there is little the government can do to settle the dispute.

“The best-case scenario would be for the manufacturers to engage the discos… because this is a privatized environment, running to government to intervene, the only way government can intervene is to pull off the debt and I don’t think government wants to take on the debt of manufacturers,” Etomi said.

The director-general of MAN, Segun Ajayi-Kadir, had in an earlier interview with a newswire service, appealed to the federal government of Nigeria to intervene in the matter, urging the government to assist in settling the dispute out of court by picking part of the debt, adding the dispute arose because the DisCos and NERC failed to abide by the new Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO 2015) that was subsisting at that time owing to the closure of many businesses.

It will be recalled that the dispute arose when MAN directed its members nationwide to ignore the new MYTO 2015.

The association later went to court to obtain an injunction restraining NERC and DisCos from implementing the new tariff regime as the association considered the tariff too expensive and capable of leading to the closure of many businesses.