The one-day nationwide strike by the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) may have been suspended, but parts of the country still remain without electricity.
The action by the workers was called off on Thursday after a tripartite meeting among the leaders of the union, BPE and the Minister of State for Labour, Festus Keyamo.
There was confusion on Thursday if the strike led to the system collapse nationwide that tripped off electricity supply.
Recall that the union of electricity workers gave a 21-day ultimatum to the federal government to meet its demands, but because it was ignored by government, its members downed tools. The House of Representatives had indicated interest on Wednesday to have an investigation on why the bluff of such a vital union should be called to the detriment of the country.
It is the 12th time this year that the National Electricity Transmission System, will suffer total collapse.
Usually, when a system collapse occurs it takes awhile to get the fragile system back up as it has to take a gradual process to avoid damage or another collapse.
33 days ago, according to watchers, a total power grid shutdown forced distribution companies across the country into power load shedding.
The National Electricity Transmission System is being managed by government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
Media reports say the transmission system has continued to suffer system collapse over the years amid lack of spinning reserve that is meant to forestall such occurrences.
One of the nation’s distribution companies, Eko Electricity Distribution Plc., confirmed the collapse, informing residents of estates on its network that the prolonged power outage, which they suffered yesterday, was caused by the collapse.
Stating that efforts were being made by EKEDC engineers to rectify this and restore power to the estates, the utility company informed residents that the prolonged power outage being experienced was as a result of system collapse from the national grid.
This is not the first time that the company has issued apology to residents over collapse.
On November 9, EKEDC stated that the grid collapsed at 11:15p.m. on Friday and 3:15 a.m. on Saturday. It was experienced across all transmission stations at 23:15hrs on the day.
“Supply was received at 03:15hrs. Sadly, at 04:38hrs, the system collapsed again. TCN and our team are working to restore supply. Kindly bear with us,” the Disco said on its Twitter handle.
Another Disco, Jos Electricity Distribution Plc., announced to its customers that “there is power outage in all our franchise states due to system collapse nationwide.
“We will provide an update shortly. Thank you for bearing with us,” it said.
Just three months ago, the power grid suffered a major collapse, the ninth in 2019.
The nation’s power grid, it would be recalled, also recorded its eighth total collapse in July, plunging consumers across the country into blackout for some hours.
The government-owned TCN, which manages the grid, blamed electricity distribution companies for the system failure.
The grid had suffered four total collapses in January and one each in February, April and May, according to the system operator.
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