Why Nigeria Is Experiencing Incessant Power Distribution Network Collapse

June 16, 2019

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Cities and states across Nigeria have been experincing incessant collapse of power distribution networks due to the occurence of rainfall all over the country, according to the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

TCN and other stakeholders in the power sector as a result argue that it has become necessary for the Federal Government and investors in power distribution companies to recapitalise the firms in order to invest adequately in the networks of Discos.

TCN’s Managing Director, Usman Mohammed, disclosed this recently in Abuja while addressing interested parties who submitted tenders for the design, supply and installation of Optical Ground Wire across some transmission lines and Universal Transport Network Equipment at some substations for monitoring, control and maintenance of system operation facilities.

His Words:

“Another new dimension that speaks to why the distribution arm must be recapitalised is the fact that when it now rains anywhere across the country, the distribution network collapses like toilet paper. Even Abuja that was built as a modern city, three times it rained in Abuja for not more than 10 minutes, I drove round Abuja city centre and more than 90 per cent of Abuja has no electricity.

“Why? Because even the network that was built by FCDA (Federal Capital Development Authority), which is a public company, cannot be maintained by the private sector operator. They (private operator) have mismanaged and they could not manage it, to the extent that when it rains, Abuja network, which is supposed to be a modern network, collapses like toilet paper.”

“This is how all over the country, their (Discos) networks are collapsing because of rain. I will give you another example, on May 21, the whole country had this problem of overvoltage. To the extent that we had a system collapse, we tried to bring the system back, but because of the dropping of load by the Discos, we could not secure anything but to force the system to collapse again.

“This was because if we had left the system for another five or 10 minutes, we would have had fire explosions across the country. And even with that, after we collapsed the system, we had explosions in various places like in Jebba, Shiroro and Jos. So that is how pathetic it is.”