The Kebbi state branch office of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company revealed that the Nigeria Army Barracks, Birnin Kebbi owes the firm a huge amount that has yet to be settled.
The Sun reports that the company also denied rumours that their Birnin Kebbi workers had disconnected the army barracks in Birnin Kebbi, which provoked the attack on their workers by the Nigerian army Dukku barracks in Birnin Kebbi.
This was said by the chief regional manager of KAEDCO in charge of Sokoto, Kebbi, and Zamfara, Mr Sunday Yahya, when speaking to reporters about the invasion of the company’s facilities by unidentified soldiers, during which some of its staff members sustained injuries.
According to him, their team has never disconnected the army camps in Kebbi state.
Yahya characterized the attack on their employees as unwarranted and emphasized that KAEDCO respects both the men and women in the Nigerian army.
“Even though they are owing the company a huge amount of money, the company never attempted to disconnect the army barracks. We have been engaging them at the highest level and there is progress in what we are doing at the top there”, he stated.
He noted that the state’s low power supply was caused by insufficient allocation and poor consumer remittance.
According to him, ” Recently the company merely embarked on disconnections because of the company’s inability to pay the huge debt it’s owing. Therefore, it is not peculiar to Kebbi alone but a National problem because a generation has drastically reduced making it difficult to feed the six feeders in Kebbi which are Gwadangaji which the army barracks is under, Tudun wada, Nassarawa and GRA feeders with only 11 megawatts to share. While Gwadangaji alone requires 7 megawatts to allow customers in the area to enjoy 12hrs of supply as band C, including other bands that make up the six feeders.”
On the strike launched to protest soldiers’ assault on their employees in Birnin Kebbi, the regional manager stated that the National Union of Electricity Employees, not the company, was responsible for ensuring their employees’ safety while performing their official duties.
He warned Individuals who were ecstatic about the assault on their employees in the viral video, insisting that his employees could not operate in a hostile environment.
He expressed his gratitude to the governor of Kebbi State, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, for intervening to resolve the matter and emphasized that a compromise would soon be reached because the state’s special adviser on power, Alhaji Yusuf Haruna, is working on expanding the Gwadangaji feeder, which is currently at capacity.
