Another setback for Nigeria’s power sector, the national grid has collapsed again, plunging the country into widespread blackouts.
This marks the ninth grid failure in 2024, with multiple incidents reported just in October.
The repeated collapses have left citizens frustrated and raised concerns about the reliability of the country’s power infrastructure.
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Following the October disruptions, the Federal Government pledged to find a lasting solution to the ongoing grid instability.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had yet to confirm the incident at the time of this report, leaving Nigerians in the dark as to the reason behind this round of blackout.
On February 4, Nigeria experienced its first blackout of 2024 when the national grid collapsed at approximately 11:51 AM.
The TCN-managed grid saw its capacity plummet from 2,407 megawatts to just 31MW by noon, and it completely shut down by 1 PM.
The minister of power, Adebayo Adelabu last month said the grid collapses are almost inevitable in Nigeria given the deplorable state of the country’s power infrastructure.
The minister also said there is a need to have power grids in different regions or states to put an end to incessant grid collapses. Adelabu said this on Wednesday when he unveiled Hexing Livoltek, an electricity metre manufacturing company in the Lekki area of Lagos State.
According to him, having multiple power grids in each region and state would ensure stability.
He noted that the decentralization of the power sector would help the plan to build grids in each region, saying this was made possible by the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023.
“The Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the sub-national governments, the state government and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity,” he said.
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“We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that. This will enable us to start moving gradually towards having regional groups and possibly having state grids.
“And each of these grids will be removed and shielded from each other. So, if there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have.”
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