THE Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has blamed its inability to restore power to the North on insecurity.
It said it was working with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to repair the vandalised Shiroro-Kaduna line that led to the reduction of bulk electricity to Kaduna, Kano and other major cities in the North.
The general manager of public affairs at TCN, Ndidi Mbah said in a statement on Sunday, October, 27.
She stressed that the transmission company is working to restore the bulk power supply as quickly as possible amid the prevailing security challenges in the region.
The Shiroro-Kaduna transmission line, which supplies power to Northern Nigeria, was vandalised by insurgents and deploying engineers without security support was not feasible.
The transmission line is a critical infrastructure that supplies electricity to the region.
In the statement on Sunday, Mbah said the outage affecting Northern states for several days resulted from the vandalism of the Shiroro-Mando transmission line, stressing that insecurity in the area had delayed the immediate repair necessary to restore supply.
She hinted, however, that a temporary measure had been taken by the transmission company to reroute bulk power supply through the Ugwuaji-Apir 330kV line.
“TCN has been collaborating closely with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) to work with our engineers to access the vandalism site to enable them to effect necessary repairs. This is vital to ensure the safety of lives during the repairs.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to overcoming these challenges because we understand the place of electricity in the socio-economic lives of the people and the extreme inconveniences this situation is causing the government and all electricity customers in all the affected areas,” Mbah said.
She added that the company would not relent in doing everything possible to rectify the problems and restore power supply to the affected areas in the north.
The ICIR reported on Tuesday, October 22 that a significant power outage affected communities across Northern Nigeria, following the tripping of two critical 330kV transmission lines, worsening the ongoing energy crisis caused by multiple national grid collapses.
The outage began around 4:53 am and was triggered by the tripping of the Ugwuaji–Makurdi 330 kilovolt (kV) Line 2, which resulted in the loss of 243 megawatts of power.
Minutes later, at about 4:58 am, Line 1 also tripped, leading to a further loss of 468 MW, with attempts to restore power to both lines at 5:15 am and 5:17 am unsuccessful as the lines tripped again.
It affected communities in the North-East, North-West, and parts of North-Central of the region.