Throughout 2019, the Nigerian national grid had not less than 20 collapses which translates to poor infrastructure and maintenance systems on power transmission.
Recall that during the 2013 unbundling of the nation’s electricity sector, whereas generation and distribution was ceded to the private sector, transmission was retained by the Federal Government for security reasons.
Since the first tenure of President Huhammadu Buhari in 2015, the then Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola, had been blaming the 16 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the nation’s electricity woes until he was redeployed at the onset of the current second and final tenure of President Buhari.
However, in his less than two months in office, the new Power Minister after the unbundling of Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, Mr Saleh Mamman, has started the blame game, but now turning the heat over to his predecessor, Mr Fashola.
In a newspaper report published by The Guardian on January 1, 2020, the report began thus: “Nigeria’s Minister of Power has said Nigerians should query the immediate past leadership of the Ministry for the current state of power sector despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s interventions during the period.”
Though Fashola, who retained the Ministry of Works and Housing in the current dispensation, is yet to respond, the recurring collapse of national grid has remained a big drawback for the manufacturing sector.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) confirmed the development in a statement on its Twitter page, saying “There was a system disturbance which occurred about 12.34 p.m affecting some parts of the country.
“As of 1:10 p.m, 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,” it said.
Ikeja Electric, which also confirmed the grid collapse in a statement on its Twitter account, said another collapse of the grid occurred at 2.15 p.m 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 p.m. All parts of IE’s network are affected.
“Another system collapse was recorded at 2.15 p.m today. Restoration efforts are ongoing. Kindly bear with us,” Ikeja Electric said.
