The Federal Government, yesterday attributed the ongoing crisis facing the nation’s power sector to acts of sabotage being perpetrated by some Nigerians.
The Minister, said that several recent incidences, including fatal attacks and abduction of foreign workers, who are working on various power projects, had stalled progress in achieving completion on some projects, while other attacks on installations had led to major power cuts.
Admitting that these acts of sabotage had been robbing Nigeria of investors and development, Aliyu appealed to Nigerians to join the federal government combating the war on sabotage, which he said is actually a war for all citizens to wage.
According to him, “You’re all aware this country is facing a lot of challenges. It’s not only in the power sector alone, you have just heard about the insecurity. The railway and the communities are being attacked, oil pipelines. They’re all similar things, including the power sector.
“You can call it a sabotage because how can somebody go and pull down 330 (megawatt) tower to cause this havoc to the whole country. What do you call that?
“Not quite long, on January 4, the project that we had announced that we’re going to commission, the Zungeru, 700 megawatts hydro, which is at present over 92% completion, we’re just doing little touches to commission the project. There was an attack on January 4 this year and they abducted the Chinese workers and up till now they’re still with the captives. The Chinese cannot return to work until they get their brothers out.
“So, they are working minimally, we have like three sites on the whole project; the main dam, which on the 28th of March we have commissioned one of the turbines and passed it, we did the tests and it has passed, it was celebrated. They are working there in the main hydro.
“Then there is a line of over 30 kilometers to a switch yard. So, they’re not working on the switch yard on the line and if they don’t finish these two, you cannot evacuate. Even the turbine that we have commissioned and tested is just a dry testing, you cannot take electricity out because of the line and the tripping point, that’s where the switch yard is and this was where they attacked and killed some people, took away some of them, the foreign workers, about three.
“So, we believe they are all working together, just as the Minister of Information said. So, we need to also work together as a nation to support the leadership, to support the government, to face these challenges together. Any support you can give, give that support”, he said.
Joining the call for an all-out war against acts of sabotage against public facilities, the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, noted that all Nigerians suffer for any act of sabotage affecting public facilities.
He said, “What the Minister of Power is saying is that it’s not really about inefficiency or not caring on the part of the government, but that citizens also have a role to play in this. I don’t know anywhere in the world where people will go and vandalize power stations or they go to the roads and take the railings from the road to go and smelt and make into spoons and aluminum.
“So really, we must understand that this, whether they are bandits or vandals, they’re not the enemies of just this administration, they are the enemies of Nigeria because they are depriving all of us of power, they are depriving us of peace, they are depriving us of security and I think we all need to look inwards and ask ourselves, are we all So contributing to making Nigerian ungovernable in one way or the other.
“I think it’s a big challenge, I think we should carry this thing to our people. Ask yourselves, the guy who goes at night to go and dig up telecoms cables to go and resell, is that political? That’s sabotage. Or the guy that goes out at night to go and remove the transmission lines. Now, we’ll all live to suffer the consequences of such actions”, he said.
