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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Grid failure causes widespread blackouts in Nigeria

The national grid collapsed for the umpteenth time on Monday this year, according to local media Punch newspapers.

Announcing the development, the Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company, in a statement on Twitter, said: “This is to inform you that the outage you are currently experiencing is due to the system collapse of the national grid, which occurred earlier today at 10:50am. This has affected the transmission stations within our network and resulted in the loss of power supply to our customers. Kindly bear with us as we await the restoration of the grid.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the House of Representatives adjourned plenary over an interruption of power in the lower chamber.

Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila, was compelled to call for an adjournment after the power went out.

The situation forced the lawmakers to exit the chamber in darkness, using their phone torch lights, according to Channels Television.

Nigeria’s national power grid has collapsed several times this year, with authorities blaming technical problems for the frequent breakdowns.

A month ago, workers from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) went on strike, temporarily shutting the grid.

Nigeria has an installed capacity of 12 500 megawatts but only manages to produce about a quarter of that, thus forcing many Nigerians and businesses to rely on diesel-powered generators, according to energy news website Oil Price.com.

Back in July, the grid suffered another meltdown, with national output crashing from 3 921.8 megawatts to a mere 50MW.

Tanzania’s electricity woes

Moving further afield, irregular power supply continues to hamper internet services in Tanzania, pushing people to work from places with an assured source of electricity that is not from the main grid, The East African reported on Tuesday.

Many parts across the country have been experiencing frequent power outages, affecting business operations especially in Dar es Salaam.

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