National Grid Collapse and the Current Skewed Statistics
It is no longer news that within the past four weeks, there have been calls by the mass media and some electricity distribution companies that there has been a national grid collapse. Unfortunately, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) through its spokesman Mr. Ndidi Mbah has come up with official statements debunking the claim.
Recall that on the 11th of January 2025, the various Discos sent messages to their customers apologizing for the current power outage giving the transmission line collapse as the reason, I was part of those that suggested we wait for the official response from TCN, unfortunately, on the 13th, the spokesman for TCN debunked the claim.
Similarly, two days ago, the 12th of February 2025 barely a month, the news and online media were agog with the story of a national grid collapse, this time even the official X-handle of the National Grid (@nationalgrigng) posted the same. I was surprised again to see the official statement from the spokesperson of TCN debunking the claim again.
This got me thinking, I remember that the Honourable Minister of Power had envisaged and assured Nigerians that the amount of grid collapse will be reduced or eliminated in this new year 2025, this is a good expectation no doubt but the work of a stable grid needs to be put in place. Debunking an existing claim in order to get a clean sheet will not help the situation, effective statistics help planning and good planning gives effective results.
On this note, I would like to explain what a National Grid collapse is and the various types of collapses available. A National Grid Collapse is a failure of the transmission system leading to a widespread power outage, this can be as a result of insufficient power generation, technical faults, vandalism, grid overloading and many others. This power outage can be a total blackout or partial failure of some part of the grid, this leads us to the two major types of grid collapse, the Total Grid Collapse and the Partial Grid Collapse. The Total Grid Collapse occurs when there is a nationwide blackout which usually happens when major generating stations breakdown, while partial grid collapse is when only a section of the national grid is affected leaving the affected section in darkness while other areas of the grid are still being powered.
With this explanation, it can be seen that the last two outages in the country were a partial collapse, hence instead of outrightly coming out openly with an official statement to debunk the claim, the TCN spokesperson should have used the opportunity to address journalists and educate them on the differences between the partial and total collapse.
Therefore, I would like to state that even when TCN has officially debunked the claim, most newspapers already called the two days ago power outage as the first national grid collapse of the year 2025. But to me, this is the second partial national grid collapse of the country, and it should be treated so, so that the TCN team will not relax on their pursue for excellence. If TCN is currently reporting a zero-grid collapse for 2025, it won’t help the staff work hard for they will continue to believe that the PR will cover it up for them, statistics should be reported the way they are be it good or bad.
Darlington Okoka
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Lonny Kominek
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