Nationwide Blackout as Power Grid Collapses Again 

Peter Uzoho

Nigeria’s comatose power grid has recorded another collapse, plunging homes and businesses in the country into blackout. 

THISDAY gathered that the grid collapse occured on Thursday at 16.28hrs.

The collapse remarkably happened few hours after the Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu visited Egbin Power Plant in Lagos, the largest thermal generating plant in the country with 1,300 megawatts installed capacity.

Due to gas shortage, Egbin’s generation has plunged to a meagre 400mw, far below its 1000mw current deliverable capacity and 1,300mw installed capacity.

The minister as usual, recounted the challenges of the sector, which included gas supply shortage and huge goverment debts to power plants, which runs into trillions of naira. 

 But alerting electricity customers under its network, the Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) in a Power Update sent to the subscribers, said it was working with its partners to restore supply.

EKEDC said,

“Dear value customer, kindly be informed there was a system collapse at 16.28hrs, which has resulted to a loss of power across our network.

“We are currently working with our partners as we hope for speedy restoration of the grid.  We will keep you updated as soon as power supply is restored. 

“Kindly bear with us”. 

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the wholly government-owned company that manages the grid is yet to speak on the incident, as its Public Affairs Manager, Ndidi Mbah, has not replied to THISDAY’s inquiry as of the time of filing in this report. 

Nigeria, with over 220 million population, struggles to generate, transmit and distribute 4000mw to the entire population despite series of reforms and capital injections into the sector.