Gas pipeline vandalisation politically motivated – Power Minister

The Federal Government has accused those who do not want President Goodluck Jonathan to achieve stable electricity supply in the country before 2015, of being behind frequent vandalisation of gas pipelines.
The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, made the accusation on Monday while fielding questions from State House correspondents at the end of the second Joint meeting of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company and the National Council on Privatization presided over by Vice President Namadi Sambo.
Benue state governor Gabriel Suswam, however differed, noting that the increasing spate of gas pipline vandalisation is “act of madness because this electricity is not Jonathan’s electricity, it is electricity for Nigerians”.
On his part, the Minister of Power, Prof Chinedu Nebo, argued that people are playing politics with electricity, saying ‘it is essentially politically motivated”.
Meanwhile, the meeting short-listed 386 firms for the power plants across the country. Governor Suswam, said that a total of 110 submissions were received from those interested in 10 power plants after which the joint evaluation committee passed 82 submissions amounting to about 386 expressions of interest on the various plants.
“We have about 46 consortia and were short-listed for Bariam Power Plant, 44 for Benin Power Plant, 42 for Omotosho, 41 for Egbema, 41 for Omoku, 39 for Geregu, 37 for Calabar and 36 for Ogwurode, 30 for Olaoje and 30 for Oloronshogo, amounting to 386,” he said.
The Governor seized the opportunity to advise the people living in the communities where there are pipelines to be vigilant, saying “if you’re sabotaging it, you’re not sabotaging the federal government; you are sabotaging the entire Nigerians”.
Meanwhile, Vice President Namadi Sambo, has expressed concern over the spate of vandalism of gas and oil facilities in parts of the country. He said the action by the vandals have impacted negatively on the output of electricity supply in the country.
Sambo, noted that the effort of the Administration is to achieve 10,000MW of electricity by 2014 and 20,000MW by 2016. He therefore appealed to every Nigerian to support the effort to make the country a great nation.
On the issue of power outage in parts of the country, Sambo said he has asked the Petroleum Minister and her counterpart in the Power sector, to inform Nigerians whenever maintenance is carried out and such maintenance should be done in a way it would not affect power supply.