Olusesan Oba
Nigeria’s power output has decreased from a peak of 3,594.60 megawatts (MW) at around 1am on Tuesday morning to a meager 42.7MW as of 12 noon.
According to the Guardian, only Delta Power’s 41.00MW plant was operational on the grid as of 12noon, while Afam had 1.7MW.
This comes only five days after the grid fell twice in less than 12 hours, putting the country in absolute darkness.
According to SaharaReporters, the Nigerian Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said last Thursday that the explosion at Kainji/Jebba 330kV was the reason of the national grid’s failure in the early hours of last Thursday.
The minister had disclosed this in a series of tweets on X platform while assuring that all hands are on deck to ensure speedy restoration of the power.
He had said, “At 00:35Hrs this morning, Fire outbreak with explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 was observed burning. This led to sharp drops in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 0:35:06Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW.
“We are on top of the situation and speedy restoration is in progress. The fire has been fully arrested and over half of the connections are now up and the rest will be fully restored in no time. My sincere appreciation to those who responded or expressed concern via different.”
SaharaReporters also reported that Electricity supply was restored in Nigeria hours after a nationwide blackout on that Thursday due to the collapse of the national grid operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) from Osogbo in Osun State
This was disclosed by the Eko Electricity Distribution Company in a Twitter post on that day.
The meeting between the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Federal Government ended in a deadlock with another meeting scheduled for a later date.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, is also expected to meet with the representatives of the Trade Union Congress led by its national president, Festus Osifo on Tuesday.
The PUNCH reports that following the NLC’s threat of indefinite strike action over what the Labour Centre tagged as “anti-poor” policies propagated by the President Bola Tinubu-led administration, Lalong invited the unionists to a meeting in his office in Abuja on Monday.
The meeting had in attendance senior officials of the ministry, the national president of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, the general secretary, Emmanuel Ugboaja, national president of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Titus Amba among others.
Our correspondent learnt that no concrete solution was made nor was any major decision reached at the end of the meeting.
The PUNCH had earlier reported how the NLC had shunned an earlier meeting arranged by the minister to avert an earlier two-day nationwide strike.
Details later…
