Alarms have been raised by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Port Harcourt Region, regarding increasing intrusion on its right-of-way across communities in its six mandate states.
The corporation claimed that this circumstance presents a significant obstacle to electricity transportation, along with the vandalism and theft of its equipment in the states of Rivers, Imo, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, and Bayelsa.
In order to help protect power plants, the business requested that the Federal Government send military troops and members of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps.
This was said by Dr. Inugonum Thomas, General Manager of TCN, Port Harcourt Region, in an interview with reporters on Friday, just after a guided tour of the company's Port Harcourt facilities.
According to Thomas, the transmission sector plays a crucial role in the power chain, which emphasizes the necessity of always having safe transmission lines.
But he added, "We frequently have to deal with people attacking our transmission lines, demolishing them, and taking down sections of the towers, which makes it difficult for us to complete transportation tasks.
“I remember sometimes when I joined my colleagues in the bushes to see these failed transmission lines and what had caused it. We saw some hoodlums even attacking the gas pipeline as well as our own transmission lines. If we were not lucky that day, they would have shot us. So, vandalisation occurs virtually every time.
Continuing, he said, “The right of way of our transmission lines is another challenge we are having because most times the moment you come that you want to start a project, the community sees that there is movement here,
“Once they see that it is a project that is going to help them, it becomes a problem. They will want to stop it by all means. So I began to wonder, you want to give somebody food, and he said no. And he doesn’t even have the food.
“There was a particular project we wanted to construct in Akwa-Ibom. the community people dug 500 graves because they wanted to demand compensation.”
He said most times in Calabar, Cross River State, and Elelenwo in Obio/Akpor local government area of Rivers State, the firm’s transmission lines were vandalized repeatedly for two months until the intervention of security personnel.
On the consequence of such actions, Dr Thomas said, “When people are doing these evil things, they are not thinking because in the process they will kill so many people. Once that tower rests in our house, if it’s 100 houses, nobody will come out. It is as bad as that.
“So I call on the government to help us. If it means sending some military men or NSCDC to our stations so that they can monitor them, because there are some of our stations when you come they (vandals) have already cut the earth conductors for big transformers that cost almost N800,000 million.”
He clarified that technically, if these conductors are severed, the machine is floating and might catch fire at any time. He also mentioned that TCN management has been working on several projects over the last three years because they are not the kinds of projects you complete in a single year.
In order to adequately meet Rivers State's electricity needs, the business is presently erecting a 100MVA transformer, which when joined to the 180MW, will make it 280MW, according to Assistant General Manager, Port Sub-Region, Engineer Ben Ezemobi.
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