Vandalisation and Power Supply

A programme on Channels TV recently highlighted the awfully negative effect of vandalisation of gas pipelines , nationwide , on the poor state of electricity generation and distribution in Nigeria . While security agencies bosses interviewed on Channels insisted that they were doing their best to protect Nigeria’s vital power assets they admitted that they faced an uphill task in guaranteeing the security and functionality of these very important pipelines.

Experts on the TV programme were at pains to point out that the pipelines carrying gas needed to generate electricity for transmission and distribution to Nigerian electricity consumers and this would just be impossible in the face of such successful and persistent vandalization bordering on economic sabotage with impunity .

Given such a bad situation on generation of power which is bound to affect its transmission and subsequent delivery , one is really taken aback by the insistence of a section of the power industry especially the trade unions to vilify the distribution companies involved in electricity delivery for poor electricity supply and going on to accuse them of exploitation of the

Nigerian masses for the new tariffs approved for them sometimes ago.

Undoubtedly the labour unions influenced the Senate in stopping the new tariffs which has led to the regulator of the electricity industry the Nigerian Electricity Regulation Commission , NERC , taking the Senate to court. With the unions hailing the Senate with which it never sees eye to eye on anything as quite patriotic in illegally stopping the tariff approved legitimately by the body empowered to do so legally in Nigeria .

Koyejo, an Bauchi analysts, writes from