Nationwide blackout as striking workers shut down national grid

Nigeria has been thrown into a fresh round of blackouts over the shutdown of the national grid by aggrieved members of the Labour Unions.

The national grid system dropped to zero megawatts on Monday as a result of the complete disruption of power supply to all eleven electricity distribution companies in the country.

A statement from Transmission Company of Nigeria’s General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah, said the nationwide blackout, was due to staff of the TCN, under the aegis of the National Union of Electricity Workers (NUEE), completely shutting down all power substations across the country at approximately 2:19 AM on Monday, causing the national grid system to drop to zero megawatts.

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“At about 1:15 am 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 Center was brought to zero.

“Other transmission substations that were shut down, by the Labour Union include the Ganmo, Benin, Ayede, Olorunsogo, Akangba and Osogbo Transmission Substations. Some transmission lines were equally opened due to the ongoing activities of the labour union,” the statement read in part.

On the power generating side, Mbah said units from different generating stations were forced to shut down some units of their generating plants.

The statement said, “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. The sudden forced load cuts led to high frequency and system instability, which eventually shut down the national grid at 2:19 AM.”

It could be recalled that Labour Unions after a four-hour meeting with the leadership of the National Assembly on Sunday evening in Abuja, the leadership of the Organised Labour said there was no going back on the nationwide industrial action slated to start on Monday.

“For now, we don’t have the power to call off the strike, tomorrow (Monday) morning, the strike will kick off as we take their (NASS) plea asking us to call off the strike to our various organs,” said Festus Osifo after the meeting with NASS leadership.

Osifo, the President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC); and his counterpart in the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero; also met with Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Speaker of the House of Representatives Tajudeen Abbas. in Abuja.

The meeting was part of last-minute efforts by the legislators to persuade aggrieved workers to shelve their planned industrial action for a new minimum wage.

The decision of the Organised Labour followed the deadlock between the Federal Government and the unions over a new national minimum wage and reversal of the recent hike in electricity tariffs.