Adewale Sanyaolu

The country yesterday, recorded its first  grid collapse in 2020, throwing some parts of the country into darkness.

The  collapse which occurred at about 12.34 pm yesterday, according to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), was said to be a partial collapse as it didn’t affect the entire country.

Confirming the development to Daily Sun on phone, TCN Managing Director , Mr. Usman Gur Mohammed, said as at 1.10pm yesterday, supply had been restored to Abuja and most parts of the affected areas, adding that the Port Harcourt region was not affected in the system downturn.

‘‘Yes it is true that we had a partial system disturbance.    I say partial because it was not a disturbance that affected the entire country as the Port Harcourt region was not, in any way, affected by the disturbance,’’ he said.

Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC) had yesterday, raised the alarm on its verified twitter handle. ’’Dear customer, present outage affecting all is a TCN system disturbance on the grid, power to be restored as soon as available.

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The outage which occurred at 12.37hrs is due to a TCN system collapse affecting Lekki, Ibeju and environs. The team is working to restore power. Please bear with us.’’

General Manager, TCN, Mrs.Ndidi Mbah, while responding to Daily Sun inquiry, said restoration of the affected parts of the country was ongoing and would be completed before the end of the day.

She said restoration work is a gradual process and some of the affected parts would be coming up one after another as all could not come up at the same time.

On the course of the system disturbance, Mbah said the focus of TCN was to ensure that every part of the country would be restored, after which it would now launch investigation into the immediate and remote causes of the glitch.

Between January 2010 and December 2019, Nigerian electricity consumers have had to contend with 210 power grid collapses, 13 of which occurred in 2019, records obtained from the System Operator (SO), a section of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), indicate.

Findings show that 13 of power grid collapses witnessed last year were among at the least 210 of such incidents that have been recorded since 2010.