House of Reps members use torchlights after power outage during plenary

The House of Representatives members on Tuesday were forced to use their phone torchlights after a power outage during plenary.

The development forced the Speaker of the House, Femi Gbajabiamila to adjourn the sitting.

According to reports, the lawmakers for the lower chamber had to exit the chambers in darkness using their phone torchlights.

This is coming hours after the national grid for the seventh time in 2022 crashed to zero megawatts (MW), a development that resulted in a nationwide outage.

The national electricity grid as of 10am on Monday had 3,712MW generated from 21 Generation Companies (GenCos) before it dropped to 0MW one hour after.

According to the information from the System Operations, a section of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), only Afam IV was on the grid but with zero supply as of 12noon.

As of Sunday, the highest generation was 4,100MW while the lowest was 3,652MW with the frequency hovering between 49.04 Hertz (Hz) and 50.34Hz.

Since July 1 this year, consumers said power supply had increased in their various areas.

For instance, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) recently confirmed increment in its daily allocation to over 500MW from the actual 300MW it had distributed before then.

Though the national grid had not cross 5,000MW, Daily Trust observed that level of load rejection especially around the DisCos’ networks had dropped significantly with some customers entitled to five-hour supply, recording over 12 hours daily.

The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had attributed the improvement in power supply nationwide to the partial activation of contracts that seeks to hold sector operators liable for deliberate incompetence.