The widespread power blackouts suffered by Nigerians is about to worsen in the coming weeks as the Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Power, Ambassador Godknows Igali, has disclosed of a drop in power generation from 4,500MW to 2700MW within the last five weeks.
While revealing this to Senate Correspondents yesterday shortly after briefing the Senate Committee on Power, Steel Development and Metallurgy, Igali informed that gas and crude oil pipeline vandals were responsible for the drastic drop in power generation.
He blamed the drop in power generation to the increased rate of vandalism perpetrated daily by vandals on both oil and gas pipelines across the country since last month.
The Permanent Secretary however noted that as a way of preventing vandals from throwing the entire country into blackout, security agencies have swung into action against them with 200 of them already in the nets of the agencies for the needed prosecution.
His words, “We have been able to explain to electricity consumers that the current power outrage is as a result of high rate of pipeline vandalization. They vandalize 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-electric power dams, Shiroro, Jebba and Kanji which are the major ones, but this dry season the hydro-electric dams does not do well. Security agencies have arrested 200 people vandalizing 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,” he noted.
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