The minister of power, Adebayo Adelabu, has recommended capital punishment for vandals and theft of power infrastructure.

The minister said this in Abuja on Monday while reacting to the frequent vandalism of power infrastructure.

He said that the issue of power infrastructure vandalism and theft was one of the sector’s current problems.

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.

“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 much 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 backwards,” he said.

Mr Adelabu said that Nigerians must realise that these assets belong to them, so they must jealousy 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 costs a lot of money to replace them when damaged.

The minister said that the ministry was also collaborating with states to have their protection framework to protect the infrastructure.

According to him, the federal government is also trying to provide at least two million metres annually.

“So that in four to five years, the huge metre gap will disappear or significantly reduce.

He said that there was already a presidential metering initiative that I was working on the metering gap.

”We already have a seed fund of N75 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 N100 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.

The minister said that as the metre gap was being reduced, there were new connections as new communities were connected to the grid, so there was a need to be aggressive on this.

(NAN)