By Uche Amunike
A widespread blackout is being presently experienced across the country as power generation on the Nigerian power grid collapsed to zero megawatts, Monday.
Various power distribution companies have duly alerted their customers about the grid collapse, explaining that it was solely responsible for the general outages.
In Enugu, for instance, five states under its franchise area were affected by the blackout caused by the plunge in power generation on the grid. The company, ‘Enugu Disco’ described it as a general system collapse while sending out information to their customers in the South East to notify them of the reason for the loss of supply currently being experienced by them across the network.
Hear them: ‘The Enugu Electricity Distribution Plc wishes to inform her esteemed customers in the South-East of a general system collapse which occurred this morning, Monday, March 14, 2022 at 10:40am.’
‘This is the reason for the loss of supply currently being experienced across the network,’ the firm explained.
‘Consequently, all our outgoing feeders are out and supply to our customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo states are affected by this development. We are on standby and awaiting a signal from the National Control Centre for restoration of supply’, they concluded.
The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) was not left out of the Nigerian power grid collapse situation. Its network and franchise areas were also affected. These include the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Kogi, Nasarawa and Niger States which all get power from them.
They also appealed to their customers to bear with the inconveniences that will come with the system collapse, while adding that they will take appropriate measures to restore normal supply as soon as they can.
The Ikeja Disco on their part confirmed the Nigerian power grid collapse which happened almost at the same time on Monday. This made the Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) to inform its customers of the system collapse that led to outages across their network, even as they assured them that they were on top of the situation with their TCN partners while promising to keep them updated.
The Kaduna Disco was not left out as the situation was exactly the same in their network area.
In Abuja, the industry data available showed that 19 power generating plants where producing electricity on Monday as at 6am but eventually lost production before the power grid collapsed.
Different power generating companies attributed to the constant Nationwide blackout to the weak infrastructure of transmission and distribution companies stating that it was the poor infrastructure of the discos and TCN that made the quantum of power generation in Nigeria inconsequential. Recall that the grid is managed by the TCN.
Meanwhile the Executive Secretary, Association of Power Generating Companies, Joy Ogaji, has condemned the position of the TCN that the Gencos were responsible for the Nigerian power grid collapse. The TCN had earlier blamed the low power generation in the country to Genco’s refusal to generate power as the transmission company claimed they were not responsible for the current power shortage, nationwide.
The Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu has however embarked on a meeting with all the stakeholders of the power sector to find ways to proffer solution to the problem of low power generation which has brought about the epileptic power supply across Nigeria.
