- Safiu Kehinde
The Federal Government of Nigeria has began moves towards the protection of power infrastructures as it meet with Civil-Military Committee on Energy Security.
Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, had met with the committee at his office yesterday where he harped on the issue of vandalism.
Adelabu charged the committee to bring to an end, the spate of power infrastructures vandalization by scrupulous elements.
“This meeting with you today is very important and critical to us all. We must let the vandals know that it will never be business as usual. We all know what these vandals have done to our national asset.
“Daily, they deprived us of providing stable and affordable electricity to homes, industries, and to all critical sectors of our economy. That cannot continue and that is what we are determined to achieve.
“As a critical stakeholder, we appreciate your concern and the effort you have put in to help us secure our assets. Let me say here that power is instrumental to all we do and the protection of its infrastructure should be the greatest concern of all of us as Nigerians”, the Minister said.
Speaking further, Adelabu decried how the country of over 200 million people depend on 5000 megawatts of electricity.
He stressed on the need to improve and increase the capacity of the power sector which he termed as crucial to the nation’s development.
“It is shameful for a nation of over 200 million people to still be on 5000 megawatts of electricity at this age. Let me tell you that some of the transformers we are still using today are 64 years old.
“How to you want such to give you what you desire at this age? Those maintaining them do not even understand them again.
“This is a reflection of the actions and inactions of the past 60 years. We have not done what is right in this sector in the past 60 years and that is what we are correcting now.
“So, it is the desire of President Tinubu to move away from this narrative and give Nigerians what they deserve in terms of energy and power supply and that is what we are set to achieve in the ministry now.
“We want to eradicate energy poverty among Nigerians. Our focus now is to engender a new energy development for Nigeria that will make electricity available to all Nigerians, where they reside.
“The power sector is a priority to this government and when we get it right here, all other sectors will also get it right”, he said.
In the same vein, the leader of the group, Adams Otako, emphasized on the importance of the energy sector in nation development- a factor that motivated them to secure power assets at all cost.
“We believe that the energy sector is the bedrock of the National security. Guarding it is a collective responsibility and we want to also tell Nigerians that until we begin the ownership of governance, we can not develop.
“If the power sector does not function properly, we cannot function maximally as a nation and as a people.
“We also realised that a lot of your engagements and policies are often misunderstood by people.
“We want you to take us along, so that in such circumstances, we can relay the truth and say, ‘stop that propaganda’.
“We are made up of patriotic Nigerians. When we wanted to form the committee, we approached the Defence headquarters and that is why you can see that we have virtually all the security agencies present among us.
“We also have as our member the National Orientation Agency .
“We have the Civil Defence, the State Security Department, the Fire Service, other civil society groups among us” Otako said.