BLACKOUT IN NASS OVER UNPAID BILLS

National Assembly management is broke, a development that has made the legislative body unable to pay many of its utility bills, Nigerian Pilot Saturday’s investigation has revealed.
As from Thursday evening till press time, the National Assembly has been without electricity. It was learnt that the Abuja Electricity Company has stopped electricity supply to the National Assembly complex following non-payment of electricity bills, reportedly put at N8 million.
The development has forced the National Assembly to resort to its diesel powered generators to supply electricity to offices and business centres inside the legislative complex.
However the embarrassing moment came on Thursday evening when the generating plants, which were acting as alternative to electricity stopped working. An operator told our correspondent that diesel needed to power the generators had finished and there was no money to buy more.
On Friday, the blackout continued, crippling activities in the offices, banks and other businesses inside the legislative complex. Many staffers were seen leaving the complex as early as noon as a result of the blackout.
The blackout has come with its security risks as reported by a Department of State Services, DSS, operative attached to the National Assembly. All the security scanners installed at the major entrances to the legislative quarters could not work because of the power outage, the operative confided in our reporter.
Our reporter also learnt that in the last six weeks, electricity to the legislative complex have been largely from the generating sets.
In other areas, overgrown weed were sighted in previously beautiful and well manicured national assembly complex even as litters of could be found in the surroundings.
In April, five middle-aged men and a woman narrowly escaped death at the National Assembly as one of its dilapidated elevators trapped the occupants for almost an hour.
The mishap occurred in the House of Representatives wing (old section) of the legislative complex.
Technician resorted to manually lowering the malfunctioning elevator to the ground floor before forcefully opening the elevator doors to free the occupants. Such elevator mishap has become a regular occurrence in the legislative complex.
For the past three years, the National Assembly budget allocation has been in the region of N150 billion.
Federal lawmakers are scheduled to resume from their two-week recess on Tuesday.
All attempt to get officials of the National Assembly to speak on the matter proved abortive as they neither replied calls nor SMS sent to them.
Source: Nigerian Pilot