Chief of Army Staff ( CAS) Lt. General Taoreed Abiodun Lagbaja has appealed to the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu to intervene over the blackout in the Army barracks, noting that corpses in the mortuaries are decomposing.
He sought the Minister’s intervention in the N42 billion electricity bill debt that resulted in the disconnection of the military formations alongside other major customers.
He made the call when he visited the Minister in Abuja, according to the Minister’s Special Adviser, Strategic Communication and Media Relations, Bolaji Tunji, in a statement yesterday.
The statement quoted the CAS as saying, “Debt owed is loaded on the meter, so no matter the amount of credit we put, the meters pick it automatically .
“Corpses in the Army mortuaries are decomposing, and the owners of the corpses are protesting.”
Lagbaja regretted that some barracks and cantonments have been in total blackout since January.
He further stated that it is impossible for the Army to raise funds to pay the entire debt and solicit liquidation, as was done in 2005 by the then President.
He assured the Minister of the Army’s unflinching support for developing intelligence strategies to curb the menace of electricity infrastructure vandalism.
Responding, Adelabu assured him of his readiness to dialogue with distribution companies (DISCOs) to relieve the Nigerian Army of its electricity debt burden amounting to N42bn.
The Army Chief had described blackouts in army barracks and cantonments as security threats.
The Minister, who acknowledged that power outages are not peculiar to army barracks but a national issue, said the DISCOs and GENCOs are profit-oriented organisations and “we can only plead with them to adopt a repayment plan on a monthly basis instead of embedding the whole debt in their meter.
While encouraging the Army to continue assisting the Ministry in safeguarding power facilities across the nation, Adelabu pledged to seek collaboration for the Army through any of the development partners for installation of Solar PVs and Battery Energy Storage System(BESS) as alternative power supplies in Army barracks and cantonment.
