By Adedapo Adesanya
The Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu, has revealed that a fire outbreak at the Kainji/Jebba line caused the national grid collapse that has resulted in the general power outage experienced all over the country.
In a statement shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, he said the outbreak has been taken care of and called for calm as the issue is resolved.
He wrote, “At 00:35Hrs this morning, a fire outbreak with an 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. Kainji started dropping load from 451.45 MW at 00:35:07Hrs to zero.
“At 00:41Hrs, the frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41 Hz, resulting in system collapse of the grid. 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 channels and the team of Engineers for their prompt response to the situation and the work done so far.”
He then said the reason for the delayed response was to ward off saboteurs from capitalising on the situation.
“Let’s get the restoration work completed as soon as possible. The delay in the update was deliberate so as not to cause panic and to also be able to update on the progress of remedial actions taken so far. This is to ensure economic and security saboteurs don’t take advantage of every situation reported,” he added.
Business Post had reported that businesses and daily activities have been trumped by the crisis, especially at a time when there is high energy cost.
Nigeria has not been a stranger to power outages, but this is the first occurrence during the new administration of President Bola Tinubu, which has promised to fix the power sector.
Modupe Gbadeyanka