Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has assured that electricity would be fully restored to the northern part of the country within the next 14 days.
This is just as he assured of the federal government’s commitment to speed up the pace of work to restore electricity to all the affected states.
Adelabu, who made this known while responding to questions from senators at the National Assembly, however, said partial restoration would be completed within the next three days.
According to him, the officials were working with security agencies to access the grid area currently occupied by vandals.
“I assure you that within the next 14 days, the repairs will be completed, and power will be fully restored to the North.”
Managing Director of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Sule Abdulaziz, had stated at a press briefing in Abuja that the ongoing repairs to the damaged transmission line that led to a blackout in northern Nigeria would be completed by November 3, 2024.
It also stated that alternative measures had been put in place to transmit 400 megawatts to certain areas within the next 24 hours.
He also stated that a siege laid by bandits significantly hindered initial attempts to repair the vandalised 330kV Shiroro-Mando Line 1, and this disruption ultimately led to the collapse of several other towers along the line.
Providing an update at the briefing, Abdulaziz said the company had deployed its engineers to complete the restoration and is set to distribute approximately 500 to 600 megawatts to the northern region by Sunday.
On what the company is doing to stop the vandalism on transmission lines, he said, “We have been cooperating with owners of the land, that’s with the local people. We have also been cooperating with the security agencies, with civil defence, with the Nigerian police and with the army to make sure that they patrol our transmission line. We also used to engage locals, even providing them with transportation and phone so that if they saw anything happen in our transmission line, they would quickly call us. So we are working on that.”
“However, what we’re talking about is vandalism, so even if you have a chopper to identify the faults, we need to go there to work, but it is difficult because of the security situation. People have asked what we’re doing to avoid recurrence, the truth is that we have been talking. We’ve been engaging the locals, security agencies and many groups to help us protect our equipment.
“Grid collapse is not just the problem of TCN. We are the managers of grid and transmission networks, but other faults from generation and distribution networks can also trigger a collapse.
“We are not relenting; we’re working to replace outdated infrastructure to ensure we have a more stable grid. If you look at what used to happen before, the situation used to be worse but gradually, things are improving. And we’ll continue to work to get them to even be better.”
