PETROLEUM and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, has blamed the poor gas supply that leads to epileptic power in the country on sabotage.

It also called on the Federal Government to pay more attention to the power sector to create more jobs in the country.

PENGASSAN’s National Publicity Secretary, Mr. SeyiGambo, implored the Federal Government to do all possible to stop the saboteurs, stressing that there was the need for the Federal Government to do more in the protection of gas pipelines to improve power supply in the country.

According to him, host communities and security agencies saddled to protect the gas pipeline network must play an objective role in fishing out the vandals, saying “We have lost some quantum of energy to pipeline vandalism, which had resulted to a drop of about 4,000 megawatts of power supply. The consequence is that electricity consumers pay more out of their meagre salaries to power generating sets. Many companies, which can no longer cope with such drain on capital, have relocated from Nigeria. These companies ought to provide jobs for our youths.”

He advised government to exploit other means of alternative energy to boost power supply, arguing that the nation could have generated more than 10,000MW now, but the challenges of pipeline vandalism had restrained the government from achieving the target.

According to him, vandals were bent on sabotaging the transformation of the power sector and urged the government to expedite action on the completion of the ongoing10 Independent Power Projects across the country.

He said that the government should take pragmatic steps to fix the nation’s infrastructure, noting that worsening power situation in the country had compounded the problems of the self-employed.

Gambofurther said,”Government needs to do something tangible to fix the power situation in the country. Before the privatisation of the power sector, Nigerians were enjoying a little bit of light, but the situation has gone from bad to worse. If the investors have no muzzle to resolve the power problem, then the government can reverse the privatisation because the country can be in crisis for a long time.

“Small and medium-scale businesses are closing shops, due to worsening power situation and those with bright entrepreneurship ideas could not exhibit or practice it as most development depends on power. The artisans, such as barbers, welders, tailors, carpenters, cyber café operators amongst others depend on electricity to continue in their businesses.”

He argued that if the power problem was addressed, it would go a long way in curbing some of the crimes committed by idle youths.

He described the unemployment situation in Nigeria as “a time bomb that can explode any moment,” stressing that the three tiers of government must be practical in their quest for job creation.