The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Taoreed Lagbaja, has appealed for the liquidation of the N42bn electricity debt of the Nigerian Army following the disconnection of various Army barracks and cantonments by power distribution companies.
Lagbaja also revealed that the blackouts in barracks had led to the decomposition of corpses in Army mortuaries, a development that had warranted protests by owners of the corpses.
The Army chief made the appeal when he visited the Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, in Abuja, where the minister told him that the debt would be restructured and not written off.
Lagbaja, in a statement issued in Abuja by the media aide to the power minister, Bolaji Tunji, said the main reason for his visit was to discuss the consequences of the power outage in Army formations and the way forward.
He regretted that some barracks and cantonments had been in total blackout since January.
He was quoted as saying, “Debt owed is loaded on the meter, so no matter the amount of credit we put, the meters pick it automatically. Corpses in the Army mortuaries are decomposing and the owners of the corpses are protesting
According to the statement, “he (Lagbaja) further stated that the army couldn’t raise funds to pay the entire debt, as he solicited liquidation as was done in 2005 by the then President.”