By Constance Athekame
The Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu has recommended capital punishment for vandals and theft of power infrastructure.
The minister said this in Abuja on Monday while reacting to the frequent vandalism of power infrastructure.
He said that the issue of power infrastructure vandalisation and theft was one of the pains the sector is going through.
He said “the ministry of power and agencies under it is pushing for capital punishment for those involved in vandalisation and power thefts of all forms.
“Capital punishment is not too much because they are gradually killing the nation. They are killing the economy. They are killing the people.
“Vandals are getting too many comfort all over transmission and distribution power assets.
“This is not only frustrating our efforts to achieve uninterrupted power supply. It is driving the nation backward,” he said.
Adelabu said that Nigerians must realise that these assets belong to them, so they must jealousy protect them, adding that it was the taxpayers’ money that was used to acquire them.
He said the ministry of power was collaborating with office of the National Security Adviser and security agencies to protect power infrastructure as they cost a lot of money to replace when damaged.
The minister said that the ministry was also collaborating with states to have their protection framework, to protect the infrastructure.
According to him, the Federal Government is also tryimg to provide at least two million meters on a yearly basis.
“So that in four to five years, the huge meter gap will disappear or significantly reduce.”
He said that there was already a presidential metering initiative that was working on the metering gap.
“We already have a seed fund of ₦75 billion to start working. And we are also going to have some debt injection from the Nigerian Sovereign Investments Authority to complement the fund.
“There is even a possibility of increasing the fund to a ₦100 billion. We have a planned intervention to reduce the meter gap. But the Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) must also sit up.
“We need to interrogate their metering plans and give them the minimum target they must achieve in a year,” he said.
The minister said that as the meter gap was being reduced, there were new connections of new communities connected to the grid; so we need to be aggressive on this. (NAN)(www.nanews.ng)
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Edited by Ese E. Eniola Williams
