From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
Federal Government today moved for a stringent punishment for electricity vandals.
Addressing the House Committee on Power who was on oversight function to the ministry, Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adekola Adelabu also sought for a bill to punish bill defaulters and power theft.
Adelabu also moved for local content bill to encourage local manufacturers of transformers and metre manufacturers.
“There must be punitive punishments recommended for this. I know there’s a bill on the floor of the House, but if there’s none, we want to sponsor the bill on the local content of the power sector.
“There’s a lot of prefabricated manufacturers around.
Lots of them also manufacture cables. I’ve gone to a number of these companies and they have very good quality standards. We have transformers in our companies here, but our contractors will be importing them.
“We believe local content will help us achieve the turnaround time.
Then, job creation for our people. Direct job creation, indirect job creation, and creation of economic activities around the power sector.
Regarding the Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) budgeting system, what we are saying is that a large portion of the outstanding debt to this Distribution companies (DisCos) comes from the government ministries, departments, and agencies.
“MDAs do budget for travels, do budget for economic activity. They don’t do budget for electricity?
So when we are interrogating your budgets, please, for the sake of survival, continuity, and sustainability of the power sector, MDAs must properly budget for electricity” he said.
The minister used the occasion to list the achievements of his administration, adding that the ministry has been able to increase power from 4,000 megawatts to 5100 megawatts in one year.
According to him, this is a feat no administration has achieved in several years. He said that in the next few months the administration would take it to 6,500 megawatts.
“Almost everybody is now a power expert, knowing what is happening to generation, what is happening to gas supply, what is happening to transmission, distribution and so on and so forth. And that is the awareness. That is the consciousness that we believe. When we create it, we work together with the consumers of electricity to achieve a more stable industry.
“I am happy to inform this August committee that for the first time in three years, the power sector has achieved generation, transmission, and distribution of 5,155.99 megawatts of power. Precisely on the 8th of August, 2024 when this administration came in, we met an average of 4,000 megawatts of power being generated and transmitted.
So I believe that 5,000 megawatts is not something we should celebrate. But if you look at it from the perspective of 5,000 megawatts, 2,000 megawatts was achieved in 1984, for Nigeria. It took us over 35 years to achieve additional 2,000 megawatts that took us to 4,000.
” So, if within a year, 1,100 was achieved, I think it’s worthy of celebration. This will serve as an inspiration for us to do more” Adelabu, noted.
In his remarks, the chairman, House Committee on Power, Honourable Victor Nwokolo, agreed that there’s need for stiff penalties for vandals of electricity infrastructure.
In addition, he suggested that the ministry should engage the community or vigilance groups to secure national critical infrastructure.
”No doubt, the good work had been done in the electricity sector. We are also looking at some amendments on how to bring very stiff punishment against vandals.
”Not just those who are buying. If you only deal with those who buy, there are many more people who will go and vandalise these infrastructure and take it to the rural areas and sell.
”Nobody will know who is buying it. So there are lots of amendments that we want to come up with so that anybody who wants to go and vandalise power infrastructure will think of what is awaiting him” he said.
Furthermore, the chairman noted that the power sector should find a way of incorporating the local vigilance groups in the protection of its infrastructure.
According to him, the better policeman is a policeman that is local. Everybody knows who is going there.
”We need to hand over our infrastructure to the community vigilance groups even if we need to pay N50,000, N100,000 provided they give us what we want.
”The cost will not be passed on to the consumers. That really will take our youth out of the streets” he said.