Nigerians are not only suffering from a massive uptick in fuel prices but also experiencing a total collapse of the power grid across the country. The National Electricity grid experienced a system breakdown again on the 16th of March 2022.  

The power grid collapses again.

The Eko Electricity Distribution Company Limited (EKEDC) has sent apology messages to customers, assuring them of updates on the new development. It states, “Dear esteemed customer, we regret to inform you of a total system collapse on the national grid at 10:40 am today, leading to outages across our network,”

We are closely monitoring the situation with our TCN partners to determine the cause and a timeline for resolution.”

This is not the first time Nigerians will be suffering from power failure in the country.  Dating back to 2021, Nigerians had experienced massive power failure in the space of five months between January and May 2021.

This comes despite the electricity privatization process that was completed in 2013. Even at that, the power sector has experienced about 130 grid collapses since then.

The Federal Government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) stated that grid collapse happens globally. It is important to note that the collapse of the power supply, each time it occurs, comes with a huge economic loss for consumers, especially commercial entities.

It must also be in cognizance that the power supply in the country has taken a nosedive in the last few months as generation capacity reduced to 2,000 megawatts with 14 power plants shutting down.

In regards to the new development, it was reported that the Minister of Power, Mr. Abubakar Aliyu, summoned for an emergency meeting to sort for possible solutions to resolve all cases pending with stakeholders in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).

This is a last-ditch attempt to bring a lasting solution to the worsening power grid failure that has taken a toll on Nigerians.

Reports state that the grid operation trend of the active 25 Genco’s on the grid, 19 produced powers as of 6 am when the grid had 3,867.60MW, but it began to reduce slowly until it dropped to 2,761.20MW by 10 am after six Genco’s went down. leaving just about 13, before reducing to zero at 10.40 am.

The analysis showed that the affected plants included Azura-Edo IPP (Gas), which was generating 447MW earlier, and Shiroro hydropower, which had 300MW earlier and later went off. Trans-Amadi (Gas) lost 92MW, Alaoji NIPP (Gas) lost 75MW, and Ihovbor NIPP (Gas) lost 101MW.

One hopes the government resolves all issues and comes up with a  lasting solution to put an end to electricity failure in the country.