Lagos, Nigeria

New Observer, “Nigeria: Power Grid Collapses for 7th Total Blackout This Year”, 17 June 2018:

Nigeria—regarded by the World Bank as an “emerging market”—has demonstrated sub-Saharan Africa’s inability to maintain an advanced Western infrastructure as its power grid collapsed for the seventh time this year, plunging the entire country into darkness.

Local Nigerian media reported a total collapse of “all the nation’s power plants” and said that a “top executive of one of the nation’s electricity distribution companies” admitted on condition of anonymity that the national grid first collapsed on Friday.

When asked to explain the cause of the outage, he said “It’s a general thing; it is a system collapse. It happened yesterday and this morning. All the power plants were shut down.”

Another report said that data obtained from the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing showed that the grid had collapsed seven times this year already.

“Fifteen out of the nation’s 27 power plants were not generating any megawatts as of 6am on June 9, as the collapse led to the shutdown of five additional plants, including Egbin in Lagos,” the report continued.

The management of the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company has “appealed to customers within its network not to engage in illegal connections to save lives and property.”

The Head, Branding and Corporate Communications, IBEDC, Angela Olanrewaju, who gave the warning in a statement, urged customers not to tamper with electricity cables.

According to her, the habit of tapping electrical power directly from low tension lines to power light bulbs during parties and community carnivals is illegal and should be stopped.

She said, “The act has been identified as a major source of leakages and commercial losses to the company, making it difficult for the company to account for the full monetary value of the energy received from the market operator.