National grid suffers another collapse

The national grid has experienced another setback, according to a tweet from the official Nigeria National Grid X account.

This latest incident follows a series of disruptions, including three grid collapses in just one week at the end of last month. With this new setback, the total number of grid disturbances in 2024 now stands at nine.

“BREAKING: National Grid suffers another setback. Restoration soon!” @NationalGridNg tweeted around 3 PM on Tuesday.

At the time of this report, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had not yet issued a statement, leaving Nigerians uncertain about the cause of the latest blackout.

On February 4, Nigeria experienced its first blackout of 2024 when the national grid collapsed around 11:51 AM.

Managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), the grid’s capacity sharply dropped from 2,407 megawatts to just 31 MW by noon, before completely shutting down by 1 PM.

In response to the frequent grid failures, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, stated last month that such collapses have become nearly inevitable due to the poor state of the country’s power infrastructure.

He also emphasized the need for regional or state-level power grids to prevent the ongoing grid disruptions. Adelabu made these remarks during the unveiling of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company, in the Lekki area of Lagos State on Wednesday.

According to him, having multiple power grids in each region and state would ensure stability. He noted that the decentralisation 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.

“This Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the subnational governments, the state government and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity,” he said.

“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.”

Touching more on the grid collapse, he emphasised that the situation would be inevitable without sufficient investment in the sector.

Proofreading by Uchechi Ojo, Sub-editor at NeptunePrime.