Data received from the Federal Ministry of Power on Sunday indicated that the last one-day strike employees of the Transmission Company of Nigeria embarked over the nonpayment of benefits forced Nigeria’s energy production to plummet from a high of 4,829.5 megawatts to as low as 43MW.
Africa Daily News, New York recalls that the country’s electrical grid was shut down last Wednesday by electricity company employees working under the National Union of Electricity Employees, leaving companies and other power users in the complete darkness
They had embarked on a strike in opposition to a requirement for senior managers to attend interviews for promotions as well as other issues including overdue benefits, and they severely disrupted the nation’s electricity supply for several hours before the Federal Government intervened.
The latest figures obtained in Abuja on Sunday on the country’s power grid performance indicated that peak power generation on Tuesday before the workers’ strike was 4,829.5MW.
However, as shown on a video clip making rounds on social media as a result of the workers’ industrial action on Wednesday, as they shut down the power plants one after another, the grid’s capacity for energy production ended up falling to 43 MW.
Additionally, it was noted that when the grid recovery operation officially began, electricity generation increased to 215MW, which was Thursday’s off-peak production estimate, while the day’s highest generation was estimated to be 4,476.2MW.
On Saturday, off-peak power generation on the grid was put at 3,421.7MW, meanwhile, peak generation on the same day was 4,636.4MW. This However dropped to 4,333.7MW as at 6am on Sunday.
The action by the Electricity employees had caused the nation’s grid to fail, the Federal Government had stated on Wednesday.
‘Following the industrial dispute declared by the two in-house unions at the Transmission Company of Nigeria, the national electric power grid has been shut down by union functionaries – even as unfettered effort was being made to resolve the issues upon which the action was called,’ this was noted by the government in a statement made by the power electricity company.
Additionally, ‘The incident occurred at 15:01hours today (Wednesday) after several 330kV transmission lines and 33kV feeder-lines across the power system network had been switched off by the union members, resulting in generation-load imbalance and multiple voltage escalations at critical stations and substations.’ he said
‘Regrettably, this is coming weeks after we had emerged from a hectic grid management regime, precipitated by paucity of generation, which we grappled with for a couple of months.’
The Federal Government, TCN, and NUEE came under fire from electricity consumer groups for leaving the entire nation in the dark for many hours due to the transmission company’s internal struggle.
The organizations said the move had further exposed the vulnerability of the current government in different discussions with reporters.
Uket Obonga, the national secretary of Nigeria’s Network of Electricity Consumers Advocacy, had previously told our journalist that the government had shown its incompetence by allowing the union members to act in such an abhorrent manner.
