Blackout Hits Across Nigeria As It Experience First National Grid Collapse In 2020

Nigeria’s national electricity grid has collapsed for the first time in the year 2020 thereby plunges the country into darkness.

The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) confirmed the development in a statement on its Twitter page, which was obtained by the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.

“There was a system disturbance which occurred about 12.34 p.m affecting some parts of the country.

“As of 1.10 p.m, supply was restored to Abuja and most parts of the affected areas. TCN is still working to completely restore and stabilise the nation’s grid,” it said.

Ikeja Electric, which also confirmed the grid collapse in a statement on its Twitter account, said another collapse of the grid occurred at 2.15 p.m after the previous incident.

“Dear customers, the outage you are experiencing is due to a system collapse of the grid which occurred this afternoon at 12.36 p.m. All parts of IE’s network are affected.

“Another system collapse was recorded at 2.15 p.m today. Restoration efforts are ongoing. Kindly bear with us,” the electricity distribution company said.

In a telephone with the Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mr Usman Gur Mohammed, he stated that it wasn’t a nationwide collapse but partial collapse with power supply in some part of the country. He said:

“it is not a nationwide collapse but a partial collapse. We are supplying electricity to Port Harcourt and its environs. And we are working on restoring electricity supply to the affected regions.”

NAN reports that the national grid collapsed more than 10 times in 2019.