Electricity outage due to “systems collapse”

For the second time in three days Nigeria was plunged into darkness for several hours on Monday because of what Power and Steel Ministry officials called a “systems collapse”, ‘The Guardian’ daily in Lagos reported.

The special assistant to the minister, Olu Agunloye, said in Lagos on Monday that a sudden drop in voltage caused the blackout. However, the reason for the drop was still unknown.

The outage also affected supplies to Niger, Nigeria’s northern neighbour, which takes some 80 megawatts of electricity from the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

NEPA’s assistant general manager for public relations, Malam Muhammed Mousa-Booth, has blamed the incessant power cuts on the company’s poor equipment and the lack of funds for repairs.

Nigeria’s installed power generation capacity is put at 6,000 mw but actual capacity was now less than 3,000 mw, ‘The Guardian ‘ said. It said that peak demand was projected at 2,400 mw but that the generation level had dropped to 1,800 mw over the last six months.