The Federal Government, through the Transmission Company of Nigeria, has spent a total sum of N29.3bn as costs to repair 266 electricity towers damaged by vandals nationwide, the latest data obtained from TCN showed.
The incidents that occurred between January 2022 and October 2024, a period of 34 months, have affected power availability and accessibility across the federation.
This comes as the latest Africa Trade Barometer report has revealed that Nigeria loses $26bn yearly to power failures.
According to data obtained by our correspondent from TCN’s monthly bulletin and news reports on Monday, 266 power transmission towers were destroyed by vandals in various parts of the country.
The vandalism of transmission towers occurred in the Abuja, Lagos, Kano, Enugu, Bauchi, Port Harcourt, and Benin regions. TCN contracts out the repairs of some of the vandalised towers.
It had also deployed in-house engineers of the transmission company to work on other vandalised towers. According to energy experts, it costs about N110m to fix each vandalised tower, and a cumulative N29.26bn to repair 266 towers.
