The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has disclosed that a fire outbreak at Kainji/Jebba, located in the North-central region, was responsible for the nationwide blackout experienced in Nigeria on Thursday.
Earlier reports had indicated a widespread blackout across the country due to the total collapse of Nigeria’s electricity grid in the early hours of Thursday morning.
The grid’s complete collapse occurred at approximately 12:40 a.m., resulting in a significant loss of power supply to distributors nationwide.
In a Facebook post on Thursday, Minister Adebayo Adelabu provided details about the incident, attributing the blackout to the fire outbreak at Kainji/Jebba.
Adelabu said, “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.
“Kainji 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.”