Northern Blackout: Full power to be restored in 72 hours – Minister, Adelabu

The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has said that full power will be restored in some parts of the Northern Region in the next 72 Hours.

This is even as the Minister noted that President Bola Tinubu has never been against the North and has no intention whatsoever to discriminate against the People as being negatively perceived by some unpatriotic citizens.

The Minister made the clarifications on Thursday during an address at a meeting with the Kano State government on how to partner in enhancing power supply in the state.

Adelabu noted the power authorities were currently working hard to correct the vandalized lines.

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

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“Two of the lines from Markudi-Bauchi road that were vandalized, 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.” The Minister assured.

Adelabu informed that efforts were ongoing to restore the main transmission line from Shiroro.

He said, “While we continue to work on the main transmission line to the North which is the Shiroro-Mando-Kaduna line which may take us about 14 days to fix because of the extent of damage done to these transmission lines.”

“They used land mines to blow up these installations and it affected a lot of towers and required a lot of civil work for them to be fully fixed.

“The situation is worrisome and unfortunate. The President does not intend to discriminate against any region.

“What happened was not deliberate but unfortunate, it is not a situation we want to repeat itself. If at all or will happen we need to have a permanent solution to it,” Adelabu said.

He explained that the power sector has been decentralized with 10 states enjoying leverage to generate power, in which Kano is not among. He called on the state to tap into this opportunity.

“There is a need to partner with us in generation and distribution. The Federal Government is ready to collaborate as there are a lot of projects left uncompleted that can lead to a lot of losses,” he said.

In his response, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, represented by his Chief of Staff, Shehu Wada Sagagi, assured the Minister that the state government will look into ways to invest in the sector and even also through the budget provide subsidies for consumers.