The national grid system operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) from Osogbo in Osun State has reportedly collapsed.
This has thrown Nigerian cities into darkness. SaharaReporters observed on Thursday that some parts of the Enugu State capital like Emene, Airport, Agbani and many other areas had been without electricity supply for close to 48 hours.
A report by Freelanews said the grid dropped to a meagre 273 megawatts of electricity in the early hours of Thursday.
According to the paper, the 273 megawatts are got from two out of the over 27 electricity generation.
A number of distribution companies confirmed to The Guardian that the grid went down at 00:41 AM, disclosing that most of their feeders were out.
As of 4:00 a.m. on Thursday, five generating plants were on the grid. Afam VI had 0.70MW, Dadinkowa was generating 0.00MW, Ibom Power had 32.90MW, Jebba had 240MW and Olorunsogo was on the grid with zero generation.
At about 1 am midnight, the total power on the grid was 35MW, indicating that the country experienced a total collapse.
The grid went to 193MW at about 3 am before climbing to 273MW later.
Meanwhile, the TCN had yet to respond to the collapse.
About a year ago, SaharaReporters reported that the national grid crashed to zero megawatts (MW) at 10:51 am on Monday, September 26, 2022, causing a nationwide outage.
The national grid collapsed twice in July and August 2022 but was quickly restored.
According to records, the September 2022 collapse was the seventh system collapse that year, much more than the three recorded in 2022.
Quadri Olaitan is a journalist and contributor to Freelanews.com, covering news, public affairs, and human-interest stories.
