The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, has again decried the continuous vandalism of power infrastructure in the country, saying that it will now deploy drones to monitor transmission lines, especially in areas that are prone to vandalism.
Managing Director of the company, Atiku Abubakar, said this during an interaction with newsmen in Abuja.
Abubakar maintained that vandalism remains a major contributor to the power challenge facing the nation.
“We still have issues of vandalism and as a company, we have gone to the extent of proposing the use of modern technologies, to help us monitor and know the status of our lines (and to determine) who is interfering with our line.
“We have just considered in our last tender board meeting, the use of drones to ply our lines, where we feel there are issue of vandalism.
“That is a technology we are going ahead with and we believe it will help to alert us on any possible case of vandalism that is likely to happen on to our line.”
The TCN boss added that the company would liaise with the National Assembly “so that they can promulgate laws to deal with vandalism of critical infrastructures. I know that is being contemplated.”
When asked how the company intends to utilize the transmission equipment that had for a long time been trapped in the ports but were recently released by the customs, Abubakar said that the first batch of the released consignments had been deployed to sites for the completion of the projects.
He added that negotiations were on with the Customs to secure the releases of many other TCN containers that are still stranded at the ports in order to facilitate the speedy completion of the critical transmission projects in the country.