>
Nigeria’s power generation collapsed completely to zero megawatt for about three hours on Thursday night.
Data from the country’s System Operator revealed that no power generation company in Nigeria produced a single megawatt of electricity from around 1pm till around 3pm.
No electricity distribution company received load allocation beginning from when the collapse was recorded up till things began to improve.
According to the SO data, 11 distribution companies got zero electricity load allocation during the period of the collapse, meaning that no part of Nigeria got power supply from the national grid for those three hours.
It was learnt that the complete collapse in power generation was due to the extent of destruction of infrastructure and gas pipelines vandalism that had happened in the industry over the past years, as well as the poor upgrade of power installations across the country.
An operator was quoted as saying
“The power crisis being experienced nationwide since Tuesday this week has worsened on Thursday with a total system collapse at exactly 12.58pm this afternoon. At that point, the nation went to ground zero, with all the Discos receiving zero MW allocation from the System Operator.
On the cause of the continious breakdown in power generation, transmission and distribution, the operator said it was a product of pipeline vandalism and destruction of vital power infrastructure by “miscreants”.
He said:
“Aside pipelines vandalism, some miscreants have been involved in the destruction of vital power infrastructure and this has been affecting not just generation but transmission and distribution as well.”
He also blamed the ongoing difficulty in the downstream oil industry was also impacting negatively on the power sector.