The Transmission Company of Nigeria early today alerted the general public that the organized labour union shut down the national grid at about 2.19am this morning, resulting in black out nationwide.
The General Manager, Public Affairs of the company, Ndidi Mbah, in a statement confirmed that at about 1:15am this morning, the Benin Transmission Operator under the Independent System Operations unit of TCN reported that all operators were driven away from the control room and that staff that resisted were beaten while some were wounded in the course of forcing them out of the control room and without any form of control or supervision, the Benin Area Control Centre was brought to zero.
She listed other transmission substations that were shut down by the labour union as including the Ganmo, Benin, Ayede, Olorunsogo, Akangba and Osogbo Transmission Substations while some transmission lines were equally opened due to the ongoing activities of the labour union.
According to her, on the power generating side, power generating units from different generating stations were forced to shut down some units of their generating plants, as the Jebba Generating Station was forced to shut down one of its generating units while three others in the same substation subsequently shut down on very high frequency.
Mbah maintained that the sudden forced load cuts led to high frequency and system instability, which eventually shut down the national grid at 2:19am.
This is even as she further clarified that at about 3.23am, however, TCN commenced grid recovery, using the Shiroro Substation to attempt to feed the transmission lines supplying bulk electricity to the Katampe Transmission Substation. The situation is such that the labour union is still obstructing grid recovery nationwide.
The TCN spokesperson assured the public of the determination of the management to continue to make effort to recover and stabilize the grid to enable the restoration of normal bulk transmission of electricity to distribution load centres nationwide.
