In a statement, Godwin Idemudia, the General Manager of the Corporate Communication Department at EKEDC, expressed his regret.

He clarified that the national grid’s reduced load capacity was the cause of the erratic power supply that was being experienced.

According to him, the company’s Agbara District in Badagry and Ogun State experienced certain customers being affected by the outage.

He assured the locals that once the capacity was expanded, the affected towns’ normalcy will be restored.

He added: “What we are presently getting from the Grid is not enough to meet the demand of our customers. At the same time, this is to notify our esteemed customers in Lagos Island of an impending maintenance work scheduled for Sunday, Jan.22, between 9 am -1 pm.

“This maintenance work will require the Fowler injection substation to be temporarily shut down. So, Ikoyi and the environs under Island District will be out of supply during the period of the outage.

“We are therefore appealing to customers to bear with us. EKEDC highly regrets any inconveniences caused by this irregular supply”

The new tariff increase approval by NERC to DisCos, according to the the Nation, took effect from January1, 2022 but the new rate is from February 2022.

According to the NERC document titled: “This regulatory instrument shall be cited as Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO-2022) for Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company Plc (PHED”), NERC based the increase on the Performance Improvement Plans of the DisCos and indices such as gas price, inflation, exchange rate, US inflation rate and available generation capacity.

The commission noted that the indices with potential impact of on electricity rates were considered.

It added that these indices shall be reviewed in every six months to update the tariffs with changes in the indices as applicable in line with the MYTO.

This was contained in the commission’s Order No: NERC/304/2021, which chairman, Sanusi Garba and Vice Chairman Musiliu Oseni signed on 29th December, 2021.

The document explained: “Consequently, following the approval of PHED’s PIP on 30th April, 2021, the Commission issued the MYTO-2021 Extraordinary Tariff Order effective from 1st July 2021 in consideration on PHED’s CAPEX proposals over a 5-year plan in line with the approved PIP.

“Accordingly, this MYTO-2022 order restates PHED’s approved 5-year CAPEX and relevant assumptions applied to forecast revenue requirements and applicable tariffs for the period 2021-2026 in line with MYTO Methodology and Regulations Procedure for Electricity Tariff Reviews in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).”

It is programmed from 1st July 2021 to 30th June, 2026.

The NERC document showed that for the PHED (A-Non MD) customers who paid N56.16/kwh in January 2022 will now (February to December 2022) pay N60.67/kwh).

(B Non-MD) customers who paid N56.64/kwh in January 2022, will now pay N59.64/kwh.

The noted that E- MD2 customers who paid N50.72/kwh in January 2022, will now (From February 2022) pay N54.22/kwh .

Details later..