National Grid Collapses For The 8th Time in a Year

The minister of power, Adebayo Adelabu last month said the grid collapses are almost inevitable in Nigeria given the deplorable state of the country’s power infrastructure.

The minister also said there is a need to have power grids in different regions or states to put an end to incessant grid collapses. Adelabu said this on Wednesday when he unveiled Hexing Livoltek, an electricity metre manufacturing company in the Lekki area of Lagos State.

According to him, having multiple power grids in each region and state would ensure stability. He noted that the decentralisation of the power sector would help the plan to build grids in each region, saying this was made possible by the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023.

“This Electricity Act has decentralised power. It has enabled all the subnational governments, the state government and the local government, to be able to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity,” he said.

“We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that. This will enable us to start moving gradually towards having regional groups and possibly having state grids.

“And each of these grids will be removed and shielded from each other. So, if there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have.”

Touching more on the grid collapse, he emphasised that the situation would be inevitable without sufficient investment in the sector.

Reps Vowed To Investigate Frequent Collapse

The latest development comes after the House of Representatives directed its Committee on Power to investigate the frequent national grid collapses and report back to it.

This decision followed a motion of urgent national importance raised by Hon. Mansur Manu Soro (Bauchi, PDP) during a recent plenary session.

In his motion, Hon. Soro expressed deep concern over the persistent grid failures, which have plunged the entire country into blackout, worsening the economic challenges already faced by Nigerians.

He stressed that a stable power supply is essential for driving economic growth and development in any nation.