BREAKING NEWS, Power
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THE federal government has described the shutdown of the national transmission facility in Osogbo and Ikeja Disco by some unionists as an economic sabotage.
It also warned that pipeline vandals and power infrastructure saboteurs would be punished.
Lai Mohammed, minister of Information and Culture gave the warning in a statement issued in Abuja on Sunday, March 13, by Segun Adeyemi, his special adviser.
Mohammed said the repeated attacks on oil and gas pipelines and wilful shutdown of power facilities by protesters amount to economic sabotage and would not be condoned.
The minister said all these had combined to drastically reduce power generation/transmission and fuel supplies, stressing that no government would tolerate saboteurs.
He said: “Vandals, whatever their motives are, cannot and will not be treated with kid-gloves because their actions constitute a clear and present danger to the nation’s economic, social and political well being.
“The attack on the Forcados Export Terminal that has affected gas production by oil firms and reduced gas supply to power generating plants and the shutdown of the Utorogu gas plant are totally condemnable and cannot be allowed to continue.
“Also, while this administration will not do anything to abridge the constitutional rights of any individual or group to carry out protests, it will also not tolerate a situation in which anyone will hide under the guise of legitimate protests to sabotage power infrastructure.”
Besides, Mohammed said the government was aware that as it steps up the fight against corruption, “corruption will vigorously fight back in many forms, including the destruction/sabotage of key national infrastructure to make the government look bad.”
Nevertheless, he assured that “nothing will make this government to slow down in its anti-corruption fight and no one who is corrupt will be spared.”
He, however, appealed to Nigerians to join hands with the government to check the activities of unpatriotic elements, who had taken it upon themselves to work against the people’s interest.
He also announced improvement in the power situation saying it was gradually improving as generation had now increased to around 4,000MW.
— Mar 14, 2016 @ 12:40 GMT
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