The Chief of Army Staff ( COAS) Lt. General Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja has appealed to the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu to intervene over issue of power outage in army formations.
According to the COAS, some barracks and cantonments have been in total blackout since January.
Lagbaja made the appeal when he visited the Minister to seek intervention in its N42 billion debt owed to Abuja Electricity Distribution Company, AEDC.
The Army Chief described the blackouts in army barracks and cantonment as security threats.
Lagbaja, in a statement issued in Abuja by the media aide to the power minister, Bolaji Tunji, said the main reason for his visit was to discuss the consequences of the power outage in Army formations and the way forward.
He was quoted as saying, “Debt owed is loaded on the meter, so no matter the amount of credit we put, the meters pick it automatically. Corpses in the Army mortuaries are decomposing and the owners of the corpses are protesting.”
According to the statement, “he (Lagbaja) further stated that the army couldn’t raise funds to pay the entire debt, as he solicited liquidation as was done in 2005 by the then President.”
Responding, Adelabu assured the Nigerian Army of his readiness to dialogue with the power distribution companies to relieve the Nigerian Army of its electricity debt burden amounting to N42bn.
The Minister reiterated the importance of liquidity and funding in the power sector, adding that the Debt could not be written off.
He however promised to intervene to restructure the debt payment if there was assurance of regular payments by the Nigerian Army.
Adelabu further revealed that debt owed by distribution and Generating Companies (GENCOs) is not the only challenge bedevilling the Power sector.
“The fundamental issues in the power sector value chain could be traced back to the last 50 years and a government that is barely eight months old cannot use a magic wand to proffer a solution. There is a saying that you won’t know what is happening in Rome until you get to Rome,” he stated
He added that vandalization of power infrastructure – which often leads to National grid collapse – theft, inefficiency in billing and collection process, poor metering gap, liquidity, shortage in gas supply, and transmission stations being blown up with explosives in volatile areas are all part of the issues being experienced in the Power sector.
The Minister who acknowledged that Power outage is not peculiar to army barracks but a national issue said the DISCOs and GENCOs are profit-oriented organizations and “we can only plead with them to adopt a repayment plan on a monthly basis instead of embedding the whole debt in their meter.
While encouraging the Army to continue assisting the Ministry in safeguarding power facilities across the nation, the Minister pledged to seek collaboration with the Army through any of the development partners for the installation of Solar PVs and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) as an alternative power supply in Army barracks and cantonments.
