By Okeke Eunice
Once again, Nigeria has been thrown into darkness following the collapse of the national grid on Wednesday.
It is worth noting that the grid suffered several outages in October, despite assurances from the Federal Government of a lasting solution to the persistent problem.”
A statement shared on the official X account of Nigeria’s national grid indicated that the collapse took place around 2:06 pm on Wednesday.
The announcement stated, ‘A major grid setback has occurred, and restoration efforts are set to begin.’
This incident, marking the 12th grid collapse in 2024, highlights the persistent challenges plaguing Nigeria’s power sector.
According to the Independent System Operator (ISO), a division of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), none of the power generation plants connected to the national grid were producing electricity as of 2:00 pm on Wednesday.
Reports from various distribution companies across Nigeria’s 36 states indicated that their feeders were inactive, resulting in widespread blackouts nationwide.
Despite privatization efforts aimed at reforming the electricity sector, this development underscores ongoing issues within the industry.
The Jos Electricity Distribution Company confirmed the collapse in a statement, saying: ‘The current outage in our franchise states is due to a loss of power supply from the national grid. The outage occurred at approximately 1:33 pm on Wednesday, December 11, 2024, leading to a loss of power on all our feeders.’
“We aim to resume normal power supply to our valued customers as soon as the grid supply is fully restored.