The Minister of Power, Chinedu Nebo has appealed to those involved in vandalism to desist from such acts or face appropriate sanctions.

Mr Nebo who spoke at the ministerial platform in Abuja said the activities of vandals has served as a setback towards the provision of steady power supply to the affected areas.
While stressing that power supply in the country has improved to 16 hours per day, the minister said that the federal government will focus on the expansion of renewable energy and also fast track its plan of rural electrification.


He highlighted the growing  havoc vandals are doing to prevent a realisation of the power reforms agenda of the administration.  He said the incidence of vandalism of electricity equipment has gotten to that level that except drastic action is taken to contain the menace, the much-touted reform of the power sector may be no more than a dream unrealised.


The Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company in recent times has claimed to have lost many distribution transformer substations under its network to these vandals. The increasing rate at which its equipment were being vandalised had reached unacceptable proportions.
Unfortunately, this is a common trend across the country as managers of the DISCOs make strenuous efforts to cope with equipment vandalism which indeed has become the major obstacle facing the company in the South-East geo-political zone.

While speaking with the House of Representatives Committee on Power, the Chief Executive Officer of the PHCN, Enugu Distribution Station, Suleman Yahaya said 33 out of 37 transformers belonging to the PHCN were stolen by vandals in Abia State, particularly in Arochukwu, Ohafia and Abiriba areas during the committee’s sightseeing as their oversight functions.

Mr Yahaya went further to inform the committee that sometimes, in a day; PHCN loses up to 20 transformers to these criminal elements.
The immediate consequence of these acts of vandalism is that life is made more difficult for law abiding citizens who are thrown into darkness due to erratic power supply occasioned by the activities of the vandals.

The nation’s economy is seriously threatened as industries are being shut down and employees laid off because companies cannot meet production target as many operate below their installed capacity.

SOURCE- www.metronaija.com/power-minister-says-nigerians-now-enjoy-16-hours-of-electricity-supply/

Super story

My house wey no gat up to 10hours in 2days no dey nigeria abi?

The crazy part of it be say when it is around 26-30(month ending), na then dem go give person stable light just because they want to distribute dem bill.

He is absolutely right. My area do enjoy this constant power supply

He is right only if he meant supply of darkness, my house gets more than 24hr supply of darkness from PHCN, thank goodness I moved past them...renewable energy all the way.

londonrivals:
Mr Yahaya went further to inform the committee that sometimes, in a day; PHCN loses up to 20 transformers to these criminal elements.

Really? So what have you guys decided to do about this?

This country sef! How can a goverment body be losing infrastructure left right and center like this without any checks by the police force.

How long will it take a group of people to uproot a transformer, and then carry it away?

In that time, isn't there a system (maybe a control room), that would alert you to the fact that one transformer has just gone offline?

Now switch over to Police Force for a sec. Shouldn't police be located at strategic points throughout a state, and be on active patrol?

If coordinated correctly, shouldn't the police force be able to respond to vandalism of such high proportions within record time to be able to prevent such acts?

These leaders should fix my country for crying out loud.

Pls let's say smthng else, dem tink say we no go here dis 1? Lairs

He is right when u talk about some selected cities and areas, may be Lagos, Abuja, PH, Kano etc but not all Nigeria and d population in such states is not up to 40% of Nigeria's population and not all d parts of such state enjoy what d prof is saying. All the way kudos to those guys 4 that sha.

yeh!!! see our Government oh!!! for my area here in keffi, we hardly get light three hours in a day. but they are there at the federal level unleashed the dream that has not been achieve, and there is no any traces that this Country will achieve it, with the state of the nation. what a fresh air indeed. Jonathan continue till 2015.

chidindufrank: He is absolutely right. My area do enjoy this constant power supply

He is absolutely right in ur area, abi? please do not generalise!

. Funny
We never seen electricity in my area for the past 3 weeks.
And what we call stable electricity in my area is having light 10 hours per week. it used to be 4 hours per months, they give us light 3 minutes oper day.

Yoshi-Master:


Really? So what have you guys decided to do about this?

This country sef! How can a goverment body be losing infrastructure left right and center like this without any checks by the police force.

How long will it take a group of people to uproot a transformer, and then carry it away?

In that time, isn't there a system (maybe a control room), that would alert you to the fact that one transformer has just gone offline?

Now switch over to Police Force for a sec. Shouldn't police be located at strategic points throughout a state, and be on active patrol?

If coordinated correctly, shouldn't the police force be able to respond to vandalism of such high proportions within record time to be able to prevent such acts?

These leaders should fix my country for crying out loud.

^^^Good points! Sometimes i get exasperated with all these silly complaints by people in positions of authority that are meant to be the ones providing solutions to these problems; they need to be a bit more proactive, get out of their airconditioned offices, have joined-up thinking and synergize with other gov't agencies/bodies! If they can complain about stolen transformers, what do they want the average man on the street to do? The blinkered view that appealing to the good nature and morality of these transformer thieves would somehow make them soberly reflect on the error of their ways is at best laughable!

16hrs?abeg mk dis man com staydey rumudara 4 ph.na once in 16mnths dem dey c lyk.wait o....wats so difficult 2 provide 24hrs uninteruptd pwr supply?dowe hav d moni 2 finance it?yes!do we hav d labour 2 carryout d projct?yes....do we nid d pwr supply 4 24hrs?yes.....wat pains me is dat we knw we hav a problem,we hav d resources 2 solve it but som rutabagas hav chosen 2 sabotage dis zangas.*in tony tetuila's voice......e go beta*

una sure sey festac still be Nigeria? cos for here no light all day only bring it in the night for 3hrs. and the next morning you no go know sey NEPA bring light.

For a minister to come out and give false information just shows that these guys don't realy care if you have light or not