• Senate committee summons DG, BPP
Indications that Nigerians may experience more of power blackouts in the coming weeks emerged yesterday from the disclosure made by Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Power, Ambassador Godknows Igali that within the last five weeks, power generation has dropped from 4,500mw to 2,700 mw.
Igali, who made the disclosure to journalists at the National Assembly after briefing the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, said Gas and crude Oil pipeline vandals were responsible for the drastic drop in power generation.
He said the high rate of vandalism carried out by vandals on both oil and gas pipelines across the country within the last five weeks have made the country to lose 1,800 mw of power generation, which was 4,500mw as at 4 April but now dropped to 2,700 mw.
The current power outages being experienced by electricity consumers across the country, according to him, are caused by the vandals, who he said carry out their nefarious acts on daily basis.
According to him, as a way of preventing them from throwing the entire country into blackout, security agencies have swung into action against the vandals, with 200 of them already in the nets of the agencies, for the prosecution.
He said: “We have been able to explain to electricity consumers that the current power outrage is as a result of high rate of pipeline vandalism. They vandalise both the crude pipelines and gas pipelines on daily basis.
“But the more sinister ones, which is with a lot of pain, is when people deliberately blow-up pipes, written clearly Gas Pipeline. They blow them up almost every day, they blow them up and that denies the power plants some gas, unfortunately our country depends on a lot of gas.
“We have hydro pipelines Shiroro, Jebba and Kainji which are the major ones but this dry season, when the hydro does not do well. Security agencies have arrested 200 people vandalising gas pipelines in the last two months and they are interrogating them and working with communities to solve this problem and put it behind us.
“From about 4,500 mega watts on 4 April this year, we came down to 2,700 mw and that is a big loss of amount of power generation. This is what we briefed the Senate Committee on power but the committee seems to be more interested in transmission.
“Transmission, because everybody is interested in power transmission and distribution. We briefed them on this and we are working with the contractors and the minister has reminded them that a new government is coming in few days coming and it would not be proper to for him to renew the contract when there is a new government in place, because the contract will end in July and we have told them to work on an interim arrangement pending when the new government comes and takes an informed position on that.”
Meanwhile, the Senate committee has summoned the Director-General of Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), Engineer Emeka Eze to appear before it next Tuesday unfailingly.
-Newswatch Daily
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