Victoria Mgbanwa
The Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities has made a passionate appeal to the Electricity Distribution Company of Nigeria (Discos) and the Federal Government to rescue universities from the crippling effects of the recent electricity tariff hike.
The Vice Chancellors are urging the authorities to remove universities from the commercial “Band A” classification and create a special discretionary band for educational institutions. This move would help mitigate the devastating impact of the tariff increase on university operations.
The Committee’s plea comes as universities struggle to cope with the over 300% increase in electricity bills, which threatens to cripple their operations and undermine the quality of education in Nigeria.
While speaking with news men on Friday, Secretary to the CVCNU, Prof. Yakubu Ochefu, also explained that the committee has written to the President to let him know what they want and how the hike is affecting the institutions.
“The Federal Government has funded solar power plants in some universities like the University of Agriculture in Makurdi. They don’t depend on the Discos as they generate their own power. But there are less than 10 federal universities that have such solar power plants out of about 62 federal universities, which means 52 others do not have.”
“That is why we say in the interim, they should remove us from Band A and create a discretionary band for educational establishments so that we can be paying the rates we are paying before or something slightly higher. But to pay the commercial rates that everybody is paying is not sustainable. It will cripple the operations of the universities,” the VCs spokesman stated.
According to him, the bills have gone up by 300 per cent, which translates into an increase in overhead costs for the University Vice Chancellors.
” For the Federal Universities, we have written to the President to let him know that with the hike, we cannot sustain the operations of the federal institutions and something must be done.
Recall that UNIBEN closed down because of the students’ protest over electricity.
” If nothing is done urgently, university operations will grind to a halt very soon.
So, it is either they (the government) move us from Band A to another band, which will give us reduced costs, support us in our effort to move to another band”, he said.