The Arewa Youth Assembly, have called on the National Assembly to urgently enact laws carrying the death penalty for anyone found vandalising any public facility.
The group is reacting to the ongoing blackout in the Northeast geopolitical zone of the country, blaming the vandals for the ongoing outage in the region.
Three transmission towers (T1690, T1691, and T1692) along the Biu–Danboa 132kV transmission line and the alleged theft of 16 spans of conductors, as gathered by our Taraba reporter, have left the region without proper electricity supply for over a month.
In a press statement issued to journalists, on Friday in Jalingo, the North East coordinator of the group, Dr. Usman Shehu Jada, said until drastic measures are put in place, such acts will continue.
“We are calling on the National Assembly to enact laws carrying the death penalty on anyone found vandalizing any facility, otherwise they will keep destroying facilities made for the public and by so doing exposing the host communities to dangers of the destroyed towers and unending darkness. ”
The group also tasked security agencies to work round the clock to avoid the continuous balkanization of power equipment and facilities in theNorth East and Nigeria,
They urged well-meaning Nigerians to be watchdogs to report any suspected move to security agencies.
Adding that “It is important to state that citizens and indigenes of the Northeast should be patriotic and treat government facilities and installations as their own—not that of TCN.”
”Apart from their call for the enactment of law to prosecute offenders, the need for the Vice President, National Security adviser, North East Governors to come together and rally support for the Minister of Power and TCN Management to ensure the protection of critical government facilities and installations in the North East, they said, have become necessary.
They urged the Ministry of Power and the TCN management to remain resilient and focused, and not give up on its fight and efforts against vandals.