PRESIDENT Bola Tinubu has advised Nigerians to step up their management skill in reducing electricity bills.
News Point Nigeria reports that the President made the disclosure during the first presidential media chat aired by NTA, Monday night.
“It’s not negative to learn to manage. You learn to control your electricity bill, switch off the light, let’s learn to manage,” Tinubu said on Monday in a chat with reporters at his Bourdillon residence in the highbrow Ikoyi area of Lagos State.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain also said he does not believe in price control and he won’t go that path. “I don’t believe in price control, we will work hard to supply the market,” he said.
After his inauguration in May 2023, energy costs skyrocketed, especially with the removal of petrol subsidy and electricity tarrif hike. Petrol prices more than quadrupled, soaring from less than N200 per litre to over N1,100 in many parts of the country. The naira also took a nosedive, wobbling from around N700/$ to N1,600.
On April 3, 2024, the electricity regulator raised tariff for customers said to be under the Band A classification, with customers now paying N225 kilowatt per hour from N66, a development that has been heavily criticised by many Nigerians, considering the immediacy of the tariff hike and the current hardship in the land.
Tinubu also claimed that indiscipline and poor organization were responsible for recent stampedes in Oyo, Anambra states and Abuja where people died during distribution of palliatives.
“It is very sad that people are not well organised. We just have to be more disciplined in our society, condolences to those who lost a family member,” Tinubu said while speaking on the ugly incidents that have taken multiple lives.
Emphasizing that it is good to give to the less privileged, Tinubu recalled that he has been doing charity for a long time but never experienced such incident because it was well organised.
“It is good to give, I have been giving out foodstuffs, commodities including envelopes for the last 25 years, I have never experienced this kind of incident because we are organised, disciplined. And if you know you don’t have enough to give, don’t attempt to even publicize it,” Tinubu said.
The President then donned his bragging hat when he announced that for three straight months, he has fulfilled Nigeria’s financial obligations without touching remittance by Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) or exploring Ways and Means from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
“Push me to my brag mode, in the last three months, I’ve not taken a penny from NNPC before I meet my other obligations. To me, that is excellent,” a gleeful Tinubu told reporters during the chat at his Bourdillon residence in the highbrow Ikoyi area of Lagos State.
The former Lagos governor said he has met Nigeria’s financial obligations “without falling back to the old order, without going into Ways and Means, I’ve met all obligations”.
When asked whether he was scoring himself, the President said, “Why not? Will you score me? I should grade myself if I do my homework right”.
In September 2024, Nigeria’s apex bank chief Olayemi Cardoso blamed his embattled predecessor Godwin Emefiele for harming the Nigerian economy through the excess printing of money and the pumping of liquidity into the system.
“In 2015, the money supply was about N19tn, and in 2023, it was N54tn. That’s a huge increase, a very huge increase. And then a substantial amount of that was through ways and means.
“So, essentially, the printing of money resulted in a huge amount of money chasing the same amount of goods or a relative amount of goods. I think that context is very important to have.”
Known as the Ways and Means, the apex bank offered short-term financing to the Federal Government to cover its budget shortfalls.