Nigerians experienced blackout in some parts of the country following the collapse of the national electricity grid Thursday.
The collapse, which was the first in 2020, Blueprint learnt, occurred at about 12.34pm and affected some parts of the country.
The development may, however, affect the 20,000MW projection of the Transmission Company in the next four years.
TCN target
TCN Managing Director Usman Gur Mohammed had in December, 2019 told journalists in Abuja, the company, in its expansion plan, plans to increase its willing capacity to 20,000MW in four years.
“TCN is currently leading all efforts expected to take the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) to sustainability. In the last two years, TCN has concluded the 20-Year Least Cost Transmission Expansion Plan through the support of World Bank.
“It established the Transmission Rehabilitation and Expansion Programme (TREP) with the Development Objective “to rehabilitate, stabilise, provide redundancy consistent with international best practice N-1 and expand the willing capacity to TCN to 20,000MW’’, the TCN boss had said.
Level before collapse
Before the collapse, the power generation was hovering between 4,000MW and 5000MW.
However, as at the time of filing this report, some parts of Kaduna, Niger, Lagos and Kwara states were affected.
Confirming the development, a resident of Ilorin, Kwara state capital, Mr. Femi Aribisala, a photo journalist, who spoke in a telephone interview with our reporter, said in the earlier part of Thursday, there was power supply in the Government Reserved Area (GRA) where he plied his trade.
Aribisala, however, said there was power outage in the area at around 12pm, saying as at 6.10pm when he spoke with this reporter, it had not been restored.
Also, a resident of Minna, the Niger state capital, Hajiya Fatimah Abubakar, confirmed the development to our reporter.
Hajiya Abubakar, who also spoke in a telephone interview with our reporter, said since 11am Thursday, there was no power supply in major parts of the town.
She said: “There is no power supply in Minna and before now, we have been having epileptic power supply in the town. The power supply in Minna now before the total blackout was that they will give us power between 9am to 3pm and 9pm to 3am daily. But what we are experiencing now started today (Thursday) around 11am.”
A resident of Kaduna, Kaduna state, Mr. Dele Samuel, also confirmed the development to this medium that there was power outage in some parts of the city.
Another resident of the town, who is also a lecturer at the Kaduna Polytechnic, Mr. Abdulmalik Yahaya, also told Blueprintthat there was power outage in the town.
Both Samuel and Yahaya spoke in separate telephone interviews around 6.15pmThursday.
No cause for alarm –TCN
However, the TCN said it was working to restore and stabilise the national grid.
In a terse statement, a copy of which was made available to Blueprint in Abuja Thursday, the company said power had been restored to Abuja and most of the affected areas.
The statement read: “There was system disturbance which occurred at about 12.34pm this afternoon (Thursday), affecting some parts of the country. As at 1:10pm, supply was restored to Abuja and most parts of the affected areas.TCN is still working to completely restore and stabilise the nation’s grid.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ikeja Electric (IE) which also confirmed the grid collapse in a statement on its Twitter account, said another collapse of the grid occurred at 2.15 pm after the previous incident.
“Dear customers, the outage you are experiencing is due to a system collapse of the grid which occurred this afternoon at 12.36 pm. All parts of IE’s network are affected.
“Another system collapse was recorded at 2.15 pm today. Restoration efforts are ongoing. Kindly bear with us,” the electricity distribution company said.
NAN reports that the national grid collapsed more than 10 times in 2019.
