The Federal Government has announced plans to restore electricity to northern Nigeria within the next three days, following an outage impacting the North-East, North-West, and parts of North-Central regions. Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, shared that power supply will be rerouted temporarily via the Ugwuaji-Makurdi transmission line, which could cover approximately 80% of the affected states.
On October 22, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) reported that the Ugwaji-Apir 330kV lines had been vandalized by insurgents, disrupting supply across the region. In response, President Bola Tinubu directed security forces to safeguard TCN personnel working on repairs.
Adelabu expressed confidence that temporary repairs on the Shiroro-Kaduna transmission line would be completed within two days, providing at least 400 megawatts of power. However, full repairs on the severely damaged lines will take an estimated six weeks.
The government is also considering stricter measures to curb vandalism, including a bill proposing capital punishment for infrastructure vandalism and a ban on scrap metal sales, which is thought to incentivize the theft of essential materials.
This outage has highlighted the security challenges TCN engineers face. According to TCN CEO Engr. Abdulaziz Sule, attempts to restore the lines were thwarted by bandit activity, despite the use of local vigilantes and aerial surveillance provided by the Nigerian Air Force.
