The Federal Government on Tuesday assured of its commitment to speed up the pace of work to restore electricity to all the affected states in the Northern region of the country.
This was as the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, announced that electricity would be fully restored to the region within the next 14 days.
This implies that the region comprising 17 states will remain in blackout till Tuesday, November 12, 2024.
Adelabu, while responding to questions from senators at the National Assembly, also said partial restoration will be completed within the next three days.
Adelabu added, “We are working with security agencies to access the gridwould 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.”
This declaration, however, contrasts comments made by the relevant agency in charge of the repair.
Earlier in the day, the Transmission Company of Nigeria, stated that the ongoing repairs to the damaged transmission line that led to a blackout in northern Nigeria will be completed in the next five days (November 3, 2024).
It noted, however, that alternative measures have been implemented to transmit 400 megawatts to certain areas within the next 24 hours.
The Managing Director of TCN, Sule Abdulaziz, disclosed this development at a press briefing in Abuja, updating Nigerians on efforts to restore electricity to the northern region.
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.
On Monday, governors of the 19 northern states called for the diversification of energy following persistent blackouts in 17 states of the region recently.
Apart from Niger and Kwara, 17 states in the North are without electricity supply in the last two weeks.
The worst affected are Kaduna, Kano, Jigawa, Gombe and Katsina, which have not had a supply in the last two weeks.
Others are Sokoto, Zamfara, Bauchi, Yobe, Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Niger, Plateau, Nasarawa, Kogi and Benue.
The disruption of electricity supply to the northern part of the country was due to the vandalisation of the Shiroro-Kaduna transmission line, the major line that supplied electricity to the north.
On Monday, TCN explained that insecurity had delayed repairs but assured it was working tirelessly to restore the bulk power supply.
President Bola Tinubu also directed TCN to expedite repairs and mandated the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, to provide security support.
Providing an update at the briefing, the TCN MD 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.
Abdulaziz said, “When the Shororo-Mando line was destroyed, the other gateway used to feed the northern part of the country was using Ugwaji-Apir line. But unfortunately, that line was also vandalized. Restoring one of these lines will allow TCN to wheel about 400MW of power through that corridor. TCN is also intensifying efforts to repair and restore the second line on Ugwuaji-Apir by Sunday, 3 November 2024.
“This will enable TCN to wheel a substantial quantum of power from Apir to Jos, Kaduna, and Kano.”
“When this incident happened, efforts were made by using local vigilantes who confirmed a snap conductor on a tower, but they could not identify the tower number. Arrangements were made to use the local group to escort our engineers in the night to effect repairs to evade the bandits in the location. Unfortunately, we did not succeed because the bandits got wind of our intentions and laid siege to the area.”
As a result of this situation, the TCN MD stated that engineers conducting the line repair work under strict supervision from security personnel leave the site by 6 PM every day.
“Our engineers are working to restore that line, but due to security concerns, they require a military escort. By 6 pm, our engineers have to leave the area for safety, return to a secure location for the night, and resume work in the morning.
“As of now, line one, which can carry 400 megawatts, should be ready between today and tomorrow.
“The second line, with five spans vandalised, is expected to be ready by Sunday.
“So once we complete these two lines, we will be able to transmit at least 500 to 600 megawatts to the northern region,” he further stated.
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.”
“On the issue of deploying helicopters to survey transmission infrastructure, Engr Abdulaziz stated that since the time of NEPA, there were helicopters that were patroling networks each time there was a problem. But since TCN was created, those helicopters have not been in use.
“We have proposed to acquire new ones, but we’re still waiting for approval and finances.
“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.”
Meanwhile, the power minister has advocated a total ban on sales of metal scrap, stressing that the market for these products fuels the vandalisation of critical electricity infrastructure.
The minister also insisted that there must be an enactment of legislation to make vandalisation of electricity transmission installations a capital offence.
He urged members of the National Assembly to speedily pass the bill seeking to criminalise the act.
According to him, prescribing a capital punishment for the crime will reduce the incidents of vandalisation of the infrastructure.
Adelabu said: “There must be stiffer penalties. There have to be stiffer penalties; you said capital punishment, yes, maybe. It may not just be one month, two months or such fines. Those are too petty.
“Also, we need to look at stopping the sale of scrap metals in the country. They are those who encourage vandalism because they buy these things from criminals cheaply.”
Speaking further, the former Central Bank deputy governor dismissed the notion that the recent improvement in electricity supply is due to the rainy season.
Adelabu explained that only 25 per cent of the country’s power generation is sourced from hydro plants, while 75 per cent comes from gas-fired thermal stations.
He emphasised that the improvement in power supply cannot be attributed to increased rainfall.
“During the season, we have only about 25 per cent of the power generated from hydro sources. The majority of our supply is from gas thermal. The rain does not have much impact on power generation during the rainy season.
“I’m sure that the stability we have recorded in the past few months is not because of the rainy season but because of improvement in power generation. We just opened the Zungeru Power Plant which is not even generating at full capacity.
“It is generating at about 300-400MW because of the existing evacuation limitations. We are working to address this and I assure you that we will record further improvement even during the dry season,” Adelabu concluded.