Kehinde Fajobi
The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has urged the Federal Government to declare an emergency over the persistent power outage in northern Nigeria, which has disrupted daily life and economic activity across the region.
The outage, now stretching over a week, has been linked to vandalised transmission lines, and ACF warned that if not swiftly addressed, the issue could escalate into a national crisis.
In a statement by National Publicity Secretary Tukur Muhammad-Baba, the ACF expressed concern about rising public frustrations and what it described as growing “insinuations” that the government might be using the power blackout to marginalise the North, further harming its economy.
The forum noted, “Over the past week and still counting, most parts of the northern states of Nigeria have been battling with a sustained electric power supply outage, leading to near-total paralysis in economic and social activities, not to mention growing frustration among the populace.”
The ACF’s statement criticised the response from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which indicated that technical and security challenges may prolong the blackout.
The forum also pointed to a longstanding inequity in power distribution, emphasising, “It just does not make sense that Lagos alone has eight substations, while the entire northern region, with more than half of Nigeria’s population, has only three—located in Jos, Kaduna, and Kano.”
Calling the situation a serious security risk, the ACF warned that officials’ continued silence was “a textbook illustration of the abdication of responsibility.”
It added, “To suggest that the problem has its roots in what had been done or not in the past is merely to make excuses. To offer the excuse that the problem cannot be addressed due to banditry along power lines is to totally surrender to these terroristic criminals.”
The forum also criticised the government’s handling of security, questioning why bandits along power lines have not been neutralised despite what it described as the “humongous budgetary allocations” to Nigeria’s security agencies.
“It is inconceivable that Nigeria’s fairly vast array of security agencies, with their substantial budgets, cannot dislodge and subdue these ragtag bandits,” it stated.
The power outage has severely affected small and medium businesses across the North. Many small enterprises like phone recharge vendors, salons, and food processors, as well as medium-sized businesses like rice mills and bakeries, have been forced to halt operations due to high fuel costs and lack of affordable alternative power sources.
Households and offices, the ACF said, are left “without cooling and heating and at night are literally thrown into the medieval dark ages of the primitive, pre-civilisation era.”
The ACF described the frustration of northern residents, saying, “There is growing, palpable evidence that it is to the utter consternation and disappointment of people that the problem appears to attract only deafening silence, suggesting indifference from those who are constitutionally expected to respond with care and concern.”
The group demanded that the Federal Government act urgently, calling for a “state of emergency on the problem before it snowballs into a crisis.”
The ACF also pressed for a review of electricity allocation across the country, insisting, “It is unacceptable that while the North acts as a candle that supplies light, it is being melted down and plunged into darkness.”
The ACF urged northern governors and National Assembly representatives to intensify calls for immediate action.
It stressed that “the current state of affairs requires immediate action in the interest of national stability, fairness, and equity.”