Sabotage ongoing in power sector —FG •Says Warri-Escravos pipeline hit with dynamites •Inaugurates new TCN chairman

Federal Government has decried the continuous acts of sabotage going on in the power sector, noting that at the moment, it was battling to restore the Warri-Escravos gas pipeline, which it said has been hit with dynamites in at least 20 different spots.

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Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo, told the Nigerian Tribune in Abuja, on Tuesday, that persons who did not want the power sector reforms to succeed had continued to sabotage infrastructure in the sector and plunging a large portion of the population into darkness.
“We are right now battling with over 20 holes, dynamite holes in Warri-Escravos line. Can you imagine that? All done to sabotage this country, to make sure that people think President Jonathan is doing nothing, whereas, if we had gas, we would easily be generating 1,000 megawatts more than we are generating now. So, it is a painful thing,” he said.
Nebo regretted that vandalism led to loss of gas necessary to produce electricity, noting that those involved in the acts were ignorant of the amount of harm they did to the economy.
According to him, “many people don’t even realise that it is not only the power sector that suffers. If there is no gas, we cannot produce fertiliser and if there is no fertiliser, farmers cannot get the agricultural input when it is needed. What is the result? Crop failure across the land.
“So, these saboteurs and oil thieves are really bleeding and causing the economy to hemorrhage. They are bleeding the Nigerian economy. The one of the gas pipeline is horrible, because they are not doing it for money they are making. It is sabotage.”
He appealed to the media to join other stakeholders in mounting a campaign against the saboteurs, in order to preserve the power, oil and gas infrastructure of the country.
Professor Nebo also lamented that many people had deliberately ignored the progress of the present administration in the transformation of the country, saying that in the case of power, many communities that had not seen electricity for decades were now enjoying it.
“It is unfortunate but it is human nature. There are people who never believed that anything will happen or is happening. If you go to a match and your opponent scores a goal, you can choose to accept that they have scored a goal and then try to respond to that goal or you can pretend that it was a mirage and that goal was not real.
“Meanwhile, the referee had ruled that it is a goal and all the onlookers are seeing that it is a goal. That is what is happening to the government of President Goodluck Jonathan. So much is happening,” he said.
He said the reforms were yielding, adding that they may not be in the quality and quantity demanded, “but we are getting there. The fact is there is a big giant step each day and we are moving on.
“Government is moving, but because of the massive population of Nigeria, sometimes it is not very evident. Give us a year, give us a year and half and Nigerians will know that no government has come near to doing anything in electricity as the government of President Goodluck Jonathan has done.”
Meanwhile, following the resignation of Alhaji Haman Tukur as chairman of the board of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), last year, President Jonathan has approved the appointment of Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri as the new chairman of the board.
In his inaugural message, Professor Nebo described the new chairman as “a versatile man in the energy sector, following his past experience at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).”
He charged the new chairman to drive the management team towards providing a structure capable of efficiently providing generated power all over the country.
“We must do everything possible so that all power generated is transmitted with minimal losses and all power transmitted is distributed with minimal losses,” he said.
In his address, the Director-General of Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Dr Benjamin Dikki, described TCN as a link between generation and distribution of power, adding that if not properly funded, managed and equipped, the reforms in the power sector stood a danger of collapsing.
In his acceptance speech, Waziri thanked President Jonathan for his appointment, while promising that the reform would take Nigerian economy to a greater level.
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