Grid collapse: Fear grips manufacturers over N850 diesel per litre
…Govt blames poor gas supply
…As banks adopt early closure, manufacturers reduce operate one shift
… FG must consider special intervention for sector — Eleojo
By Our Correspondents
Another National Grid collapse after 37 days of system failure of the grid, several manufacturers have been thrown into fear of palpable shutdown of operations considering the price of diesel, a crude product used by manufacturers, which has now skyrocketed to N850 per litre.
Hence, Banks have resulted to early closure by 3 p:m in satellite towns of Lagos State and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as well as commercial centres of other states. In rural areas of the country, Banks stop attending to customers by 2 p:m.
Electricity distribution companies announced Wednesday that the collapse occurred at about 11:00 a:m.
Wednesday’s incident is the sixth reported collapse in 2022.The government blamed poor management and low gas supply as the major causes of the repeated breakdown of the grid, which is managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria.
The Electricity Distribution Companies across Nigeria get their electricity supply from the national grid.The Eko Electricity Distribution Plc informed its customers of the grid collapse via Facebook.
“Dear Customers, we regret to inform you of a system collapse on the National grid at precisely 11:27 a:m today, Wednesday July 20th. We are in talks with the Transmission Company of Nigeria to ascertain the cause of the collapse and a possible restoration timeline. We will keep you updated on the situation,” it wrote.
The Head of Corporate Communications at Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, Abdulazeez Abdullahi, announced the incident on behalf of the company in a statement published on Facebook.
This year alone, the national grid has collapsed seven times, which the DisCos had attributed to various reasons including vandalism despite the recent increasing price of Diesel.
Considering fear of increased cost of productions, manufacturers and experts in the sectors are beginning to nurse fear of operational shutdown if the trend of incessant national grid collapse is not nip in the bud soon.
Federal Government must consider special intervention for sector.
An energy, Agro consultant and foremost Nigeria Bamboo Expert, Mr Eleojo Joseph in a chat with Nigerian NewsDirect on Wednesday said Federal Government must consider special intervention for manufacturers to avert complete shutdown.
According to him, “Foremost, it is very worrisome and embarrassing for the Country as an oil producing nation.
“Successive administrations have consistently failed to resuscitate the refineries and the current administration promised Nigerians they will make the refineries functional in 2015 and 7 years plus down the line, we are still in the imbroglio.”
He stressed that the operations of the manufacturers in the sector may have been hampered by national grid collapse coupled with the continuous vandalism of its facilities across Nigeria.
“With the constant collapse of the National Grid, insufficient generation and the exchange rate tied to the importation of petroleum products, the outlook on the manufacturing sector is very bleak. I foresee the collapse of many factories and the few employed staffs will be thrown into the unemployment market. The social implication is dire on the country and Nigerians.
“Government should as a matter of urgency, give special attention and incentives to the manufacturing sector as soon as possible by further subsidising diesel for the sector to not more than N200/ liter or less.
“Also, Government should as a matter of national emergency privatise the refineries and give them out or have an agreement with the IOCs to take over the refineries without paying for them but share in the profit in the refined products. Similar to the Joint Ventures (JVs) in the production sector,” he stated.
Responding to question on the effects the system collapse will have on businesses, the Executive Director of Nigerian Workforce Strategy and Enlightenment Centre (NIWOSEC), Dr David Kayode Ehindero said, “There is no power supply, we are having 30 per cent of what it used to be, whereas the disposable income of people is not increasing and the cost of products and services are being skyrocketed.
“Even our industries are in a coma, those that are managing to operate are only running one shift instead of three shifts of eight hours each.
He stressed that diesel last week was purchased at N730 per litre and the next day it was sold for N800 per litre, how will you replace your stock?
Godwin Idemudia, the Spokesperson of EKEDC made the announcement, which has almost become a reverberating occurrence in the Nigerian power sector.
Idemudia said the incident has thrown its network into darkness. The collapse has caused outages in most parts of Lagos.
The collapse, which happened 37 days after the June 13 system failure, dropped power supply to 40 MW.
The grid collapsed yesterday, causing blackouts in Lagos and states across the country.
The system failure, which is the sixth in the last seven months, dipped the entire power supply nationwide to 40 megawatts.
The distribution load profile showed that the national grid collapsed at around 12:23 pm on Wednesday.
Electricity from the generation companies was abysmally low of 40MW against 3,000MW generated the previous day.
Allocations to the 10 electricity distribution companies were zero, except 40MW and 10MW to Abuja and Ibadan Discos respectively at 12:23 p:m when the incident occurred.
The cause of the system collapse is yet to be ascertained as at the time of filing this report, but the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has begun investigation.
