“Fire outbreak caused nationwide blackout” – Minister for Power says

The minister assured Nigerians that the situation is now under control.

Nigerian Minister for Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has revealed that fire outbreak caused the nationwide blackout that occurred on Thursday.

As reported by the Punch, there was a nationwide blackout on Thursday following the total collapse of Nigeria’s electricity grid on Thursday morning.

The grid was said to have collapsed totally at around 12:40AM, leading to loss of power supply to distributors across the country.

Adelabu took to his official Facebook page to explain in details what led to the development. According to him, a fire outbreak at Kanji/Jebba located in the North-central caused the blackout.

He wrote, “At 00:35Hrs this morning, a fire outbreak with explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 1 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.

“Kanji started dropping load from 451.45 MW at 00:35:07Hrs to zero. At 00:41Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41Hz then resulted 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 work done so far. Let’s get the restoration work completed as soon as possible.

“Delay in update was deliberate, so as not to cause panic and to also be able to update on progress of remedial actions taken so far.

“This is to ensure economic and security saboteurs don’t take advantage of every situation reported.”