Teddy Oscar, Abuja
The minister of power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on Monday commissioned a new 2X60MVA, 132/33 kV transmission substation at Karu District in Abuja, and urged Nigerians living around electricity installations to ensure that such installations are adequately protected from vandals, who do not mean well for the country.
Nebo, who spoke during the commissioning of the new transmission substation, noted that it is the duty of beneficiaries of such facilities to take necessary steps to ensure the safety of such installations.
“While the Federal Government is partnering with security agents to effectively check the menace of vandalism, let me, again, plead like every one of the speaker before me has pleaded that the people of the entire area do everything you can to protect what is yours. Nobody would ever come and carry this sub station to any other part of Nigeria.
“Unless you protect it, deviants or unscrupulous elements and people, who don’t like the country or want the development of the country, would vandalise this. Not long ago, some miscreants went to some parts of Ikeja (Lagos), vandalised transformers, and when they vandalised these transformers, all that they stole was not worth up to N10,000 worth of copper. Meanwhile, they mapped over one million people out power supply for a long time, and it took N27 million to repair what they stole that wasn’t worth up to N10,000.
“That is why everyone of us must redouble our efforts and became a vigilante of a sort to ensure that what is given to us is not taken away from us by people, who don’t mean well for the country,” he urged.
Nebo, who also intimated the public on government’s plan to stimulate development of renewable and alternative energy for rural electrification, urged farm clusters to explore these energy sources for viability in producing electricity.
“For each rural community, the ministry of power will implement micro-off grid wind or solar powered lighting systems to light up homes, community common areas or centres and major inlet/outlet roadways into communities. This scheme will provide access to electricity to the rural areas with distributed or low capacity, few kilowatts, solar or wind-powered energy-efficient lighting systems in two phases, by the end of 2014,” he added.
In his earlier remark, Godknows Igali, permanent secretary, ministry of power, who accused unpatriotic Nigerians for vandalising power installations as well as digging around transmission towers, observed that such people are the real enemies of Nigeria.
“We don’t need to provide police and other security agents to protect the power infrastructure in our country. It is a task that each and everyone of us must undertake,” he challenged.
Joseph Ciroma, general manager, World Bank Project Management Unit, in his speech, hinted that the choice of Karu for the substation was a World Bank initiative in conjunction with the Abuja Distribution Company and the Transmission Company to identify the worst scenario within the satellite towns in Abuja that had serious electricity supply challenges, but with future economic potentials in terms of small and medium scale businesses that could transform the livelihood of the people as a result of the provision of adequate, qualitative and reliable power supply.
Ciorma noted that the benefits and impact that would be derived from the commissioning of this project to the residents of the areas cannot be over-emphasised.
He mentioned the few benefits to include: upgrading of the source of supply from 33kV to 132kV; provision of additional 120MVA transformer capacity to the transmission grid; grid stability and reliability of power supply; better voltage profile to the customer premises; customer satisfaction as a result of reduction in down time on power interruptions; and improvement in revenue base to the distribution company.
