Follow Us on Google
From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Members of the House of Representatives Committee on Power, yesterday, grilled the Minister of State for Power, Godwin Jeddy-Agba, over constant collapse of the national grid.
The members, who spoke at an investigative hearing organised by the committee on the constant collapse of the national grid included Sani Bala and Blessing Onuh.
The lawmakers expressed disappointment thatthe government has not been able to address the issue, resulting in power outages in various parts of the country.
However, Jeddy- Agba, told the lawmakers that contrary to the information in the public sphere, there have not been any collapse of the national grid this, but system disruptions.
“These ones we have had this year, in fact four of them but they have not been collapse, it is disruption. And disruptions have been as a result of the human factors, they could be increment factors, they could be political factors, it could be other factors. cccFor instance, sometimes last month we had a black out for a short while, it was due to, and we saw on social media some young men switching off the system, that is not a collapse. That is deliberate vandalisation, in fact, it is a sabotage if you ask of my opinion. How can young men go and switch system, putting the nation in back out just because of some grudges which by the grace of God is a union matter and I am handling that and I assure you Mr Speaker that that matter is being brought to book and at the end of this week, our report will be submitted and union and us will agree on something and it will never happen again by His grace.
“So, having made it clear to us that we have not had system collapse, let us take it from the point of disruptions that I have told you, one is from the union, second is from the communities could also like what happened in Akwa-Ibom, the communities disrupted something last year, somewhat early this year we have black out towards South-south part of the country.
The minister further explained that “we have had problems with gas. The gas supply is too high to our power generating stations. Gas supply has been a problem but we are tackling that already because we are discussing with NNPC and Nigerian Gas Corporation, we are coming to an agreement and gas is flowing systematically now to the generating companies and we are seeing a steady increment in generation. Don’t you agree with me that power has improved of late?
“We are enjoying power improvement and we are assure you that it is continuous. And you see when there is a disruption in the power system, the mechanisms made that the system automatically shut down. The system is made to shut down to cause us less damage so it will go down if that happens.”
The Association of Power Generation Companies, in its presentation to the committee, blamed the incessant collapse of the grid to excessive volatile load mostly at steel mills, amongst others.
Executive Secretary of the, Joy Ogaji, who spoke on behalf of the association noted that some of the infrastructure of the Transmission Company of Nigeria ( TCN) were weak.
“The grid collapse is reducing because Gencos machines are now being used to manage the grid contrary to the grid code provision and you will see that 97% of the time, the grid is on a very high frequency; 51 point something hertz and I have the evidence for anybody that wants to see, I have been tracking it since 2015.”
