Osamagbe Imadiyi
Tuesday morning saw another failure of the national electricity grid, which had failed earlier on Monday. Many people were left in the dark when the grid collapsed on Monday at around 6:18 p.m.
Investigations verified that power production fell from 3.87 gigawatts at 5 p.m. to 3.56 GW at 6 p.m., and finally to 0.00 GW by 7 and 8 p.m. Multiple electricity distribution companies attested to the development. The grid collapsed at 9:17 a.m. on Tuesday.
By 10 am, grid supply had suddenly dropped to 0.00MW nationwide, resulting in yet another round of total blackout for the entire country.
With this incident being the second grid collapse in less than a day, there are significant worries about the stability of the country’s electrical supply.
It was confirmed by the Eko Electricity Distribution Company that there was a system failure that caused power outages.
“Dear Valued Customer, kindly be informed that there was a system collapse at 09:17hrs, which has resulted in a loss of power supply across our network. We are currently working with our partners and hope for a speedy restoration of the grid. We will keep you updated as soon as the power supply is restored,” the company stated.
Contacts were left unanswered by Ndidi Mbah, the spokesperson for the Transmission Company of Nigeria. A number of distribution companies (DisCos) received different amounts of power supply: 44 MW went to Abuja, 35 MW to Benin, 62 MW to Eko, 40 MW to Enugu, 85 MW to Ibadan, 72 MW to Ikeja, 10 MW to Jos, 15 MW to Kaduna, 20 MW to Kano, 23 MW to Port Harcourt, and 11 MW to Yola.
Princewill Okorie, the executive director of the Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Center, lamented that despite rising electricity rates, the grid keeps collapsing in response to the frequent collapses.
Okorie bemoaned the fact that unmetered customers would continue to be billed during the collapse and questioned the steps taken by the government to avert similar incidents.