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Buhari Gets SERAP’s Knock For Electricity Tariff, Fuel Hike

BY DAYO ADESULU

President Muhammadu Buhari administration has received a knock from the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) over the increase in electricity tariff and pumps price hike.

SERAP said: “This is unjust to many people living in extreme poverty, and entirely incompatible with the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 [as amended] and the country’s international human rights obligations.”

It’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare in a statement on Wednesday said: “The hike will endanger lives and increase inequality and poverty exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“SERAP will challenge this travesty in court if the Federal Government does not immediately drop these retrogressive measures against the Nigerian people.

“Specifically, the increase in electricity tariff and fuel price clearly violates Nigeria’s obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which the country is a state party, not to take ‘deliberately retrogressive measures’ unless there are no alternative options and full consideration has been given to ensure that the measures are necessary and proportionate.”

SERAP, therefore, urged Buhari to immediately drop the misguided hike, and to establish independent impact assessment of the increases on the poorest segments of society, and to identify alternative measures, such as cutting the bogus allowances of people in the Presidency and members of the National Assembly.

READ ALSO: CAMA: SERAP Backs CAN, Groups, Individuals On Reversal Or Face Legal Action

“The hike is lacking in compassion, as it will hit the poorest and most vulnerable Nigerians the hardest, increase inequality levels in an already very unequal Nigeria. It definitively signals that socio-economic rights are a very low priority for this government.

“President Buhari should reconsider these arbitrary measures and put human rights at the centre of his government’s policies”, it stated

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