Power supply will be fully restored to North in 2 week – Minister assures

Power supply will be fully restored to North in 2 week – Minister assures

Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has explained why the North suffered total blackout for several days.

He said the ongoing engineering work on the vandalised facility has resulted in partial power supply in the North and maintained that the Shiroro-Mando plant where the major sabotage occurred will be fixed in 14 days.

He assured full restoration of power supply to 17 Northern States by Sunday when the second line of the Makudi-Bauchi route is completed.

Adelabu gave the assurance at Government House, Kano when he paid a visit to Governor Abba Yusuf on Thursday. Yusuf was represented by his Chief of Staff, Shehu Wada Sagagi.

While in Kano, the Minister visited the Managing Director of Kano Electricity Distribution Company (KEDCO), Abubakar Yusuf, at the company’s headquarters before visiting the Kano Government House and inspecting power facilities.

“I can assure you that, our people are on the field working day and night for the partial restoration become full restoration.

“Two of the lines from Markudi-Bauchi road that were vandalised, one of them is up now and I have been assured by the engineers on the field that by Sunday we are going to have a fix of the second line, we are going to have full restoration.

“We will continue to work on the main transmission line to the North which is Shiroro-Mando-Kaduna line which may take us about 14 days to fix because of the extend of damage done to these transmission lines.

“They used land mines to blore up these installations and affected a lot of towers and all requires a lot of civil work for them to be fully fixed,” the Minister said.

He apologised to the North over the power blackout, saying President Bola Tinubu does not intend to discriminate against the region or any section of the country as being perceived by some Nigerians.

He explained that it was not the first time that the country was having these kinds of vandalism from the Shiroro axis. “We had it before and fixed it before the consumers got to know,” he said.

He called on government at all levels to join forces in protecting the power infrastructures across the country.

“We all have a role to play in protecting the power infrastructures including power consumers. A part from the physical security, we need a lot of reorientation of our people against vandalization and power theft,” he advised.

Adelabu expressed the commitment of the Federal Government to partner with States in developing other alternative power sources.