Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Taoreed Lagbaja, on Friday appealed for the liquidation of the N42 billion electricity debt of the Nigerian Army following the disconnection of various Army barracks and cantonments by various power Distribution Companies (DisCos) across the country.
Lagbaja also revealed that the blackouts in the barracks had led to the decomposition of corpses in Army mortuaries, a development that had warranted protests by owners of the corpses.
The COAS made the appeal when he visited the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, in his office in Abuja, where the Minister pointedly told him that the debt would be restructured and not written off.
In a statement on the visit issued by the Power Minister’s Spokesperson, Bolaji Tunji, General Lagbaja said the main reason for his visit was to discuss the consequences of the power outage in Army formations and the way forward.
He regretted that some barracks and cantonments had been in total blackout since January.
The stated quoted the COAS 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.”
The statement noted that Lagbaja further stated that the Army couldn’t raise funds to pay the entire debt, soliciting its liquidation as was done in 2005 by the then President OLusegun Obasanjo.
He also described blackouts in Army barracks and cantonments as security threats.
Meanwhile, the Army chief assured the minister of the Army’s unflinching support towards developing intelligent strategies in curbing the menace of electricity infrastructure vandalism.
In his reaction, the Power Minister assured the Nigerian Army of his readiness to dialogue with the power DisCos to relieve the Army of its electricity debt burden amounting to N42billion.
He reiterated the importance of liquidity and funding in the power sector, adding that the debt could not be written off.
Adelabu told his guest that he would intervene to restructure the debt payment if there was assurance of regular payments by the Nigerian Army.
He further revealed that the debts owed by power distribution and generating companies were not the only challenges bedevilling the power sector.
According to the Minister, the vandalism of power infrastructure, which often leads to national grid collapse, theft, inefficiency in billing and collection process, poor metering gap, liquidity, shortage in gas supply, transmission stations being blown up with explosives in volatile areas, were all part of the issues being experienced in the power sector.
“The fundamental issues in the power sector value chain could be traced back to the last 50 years and a government that is barely eight months old cannot use a magic wand to proffer a solution. There is a saying that you won’t know what is happening in Rome until you get to Rome,” he stated.
The Minister said power outages were not peculiar to army barracks but a national issue, adding that the Discos and Gencos were profit-oriented organisations.
“We can only plead with them to adopt a repayment plan monthly instead of embedding the whole debt in their meter,” Adelabu stated.
He charged the Army to continue assisting the Ministry in safeguarding power facilities across the country and pledged to seek collaboration for the Army through any of the development partners for the installation of solar PVs and Battery Energy Storage Systems as alternative power supply sources in Army barracks and cantonments.
A lot of government agencies and parastatals owe power distribution several billions of naira in electricity debts that have continued to drag on for years.
On February 20, 2024, The PUNCH reported that no fewer than 86 ministries, agencies, and departments of government were owing the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company to the tune of N47bn.
A public notice by the management of AEDC listed the Presidential Villa as owing the Disco the sum of N923.9m; National Security Adviser, N95.9m; Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory being supervised by Nyesom Wike, N7.57bn, while Adelabu’s Ministry of Power owed N78m.
