Nigeria’s electricity grid collapsed about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, less than 48 hours after it went down on Monday, causing widespread darkness across the country.
Customers were once again warned about the outage by power distribution firms, as it was learned that a meeting called by the Federal Government on Monday to discuss issues in the sector had to be postponed until late Tuesday night.
In the middle of Nigeria’s present energy crisis in the petroleum industry, the grid breakdown has exacerbated the country’s widespread blackouts.
The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company classified the grid’s failure as total in a public notice to its customers on Tuesday.
It said, “Dear esteemed customers, we regret to inform you of a total system collapse on the national grid at 1709hours of today Tuesday, March 15, 2022, leading to outages across our network.
“We are closely monitoring the situation with our TCN (Transmission Company of Nigeria) partners and will keep you updated on the situation. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”
Mr. Felix Ofulue, the Head of Corporate Communications of Ikeja Electric Plc, confirmed the development to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.
In a public post, Eko Electricity Distribution Company confirmed the grid’s partial collapse.
Customers around the country were experiencing blackouts as a result of the collapse, according to power distributors.
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In a notice to power users in its franchise area, Eko Disco said, “Dear esteemed customers, we would like to inform you of another system collapse on the national grid which occurred at 5:10pm today (Tuesday).
“We are monitoring the situation and will continue to provide updates. Once again we apologize for the inconvenience.”
According to industry sources, no electricity generating company was sending electricity to the grid at the second on Tuesday.
They said that the recent grid collapse was caused by several factors, including gas-fired power plants, and that efforts were made to deliver energy to the Federal Capital Territory using hydropower units in Niger State.
Also, sources at the ministry blamed the activities of vandals for the loss in power generation, stressing that some gas pipelines had been ruptured and that this had also prevented the flow of gas to thermal power plants.
On the meeting summoned on Monday by the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, it was gathered that it went on till past midnight on Monday and continued till past 10pm on Tuesday when this report was filed in.
