ENUGU, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA)- The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, on Monday, advocated the death penalty for persons who steal power infrastructure.
This is coming a few days after Nigeria’s First Lady, Remi Tinubu, advocated capital punishment for kidnappers.
Adelabu said this in Abuja on Monday, March 11, 2024, while reacting to the frequent vandalism of power infrastructure across Nigeria.
Premium Times reports that there have been cases of vandalisation of power transmission lines in the past month. The latest was the Shiroro-Katampe 330 Kilo Volt (kV) transmission line which occured on Sunday.
The spokesperson of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) wrote in a Sunday statement that, “The company’s personnel confirmed the vandalisation of the transmission line 1, from Towers 244 to 245, and the conductors stolen.”
Usually, the vandalised equipment takes time and resources to repair and temporarily puts large sections of the country in darkness.
Speaking on Monday, the minister said that power infrastructure vandalisation and theft is one of the pains the sector is going through.
He said ”the ministry of power and agencies under it is pushing for capital punishment for those involved in vandalisation and power thefts of all forms.”
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Justifying his call for the death penalty, Adelabu said, ”Capital punishment is not too much because they are gradually killing the nation. They are killing the economy. They are killing the people.”
”Vandals are getting too many comfort all over transmission and distribution power assets.
”This is not only frustrating our efforts to achieve uninterrupted power supply, It is driving the nation backward.”
Adelabu stated Nigerians must realise that these assets belong to them, so they must jealously protect them, adding that it was the taxpayers’ money that was used to acquire them.
He said the ministry of power was collaborating with the office of the National Security Adviser and security agencies to protect them as it cost a lot of money to replace them when damaged.
Also, the minister noted that the ministry was collaborating with states to have their protection framework to protect the infrastructure.
On the provision of prepaid electricity metres to customers, he said the Federal Government of Nigeria is also trying to provide at least two million metres on a yearly basis.
“So that in four to five years, the huge metre gap will disappear or significantly reduce,” he said.
He said that there was already a presidential metering initiative that was working on the metering gap.
“We already have a seed fund of ₦ 75 billion to start working. And we are also going to have some debt injection from the Nigerian Sovereign Investments Authority to complement the fund.
“There is even a possibility of increasing the fund to a ₦100 billion. We have a planned intervention to reduce the metre gap. But the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) must also sit up.
”We need to interrogate their metering plans and give them the minimum target they must achieve in a year,” he said.
His demand as well as that of Mrs Tinubu indicates the increasing frustration the Nigerian government is facing as it attempts to tackle the various security issues bedevilling the country.
While the officials believe the death penalty would eventually reduce the crime rate, critics such as Amnesty International have argued that the death penalty does not really deter crime.
They also argue that apart from the sanctity of human life including the lives of criminals, a lot of innocents end up being killed when the death penalty is implemented.