Power outage hits Abeokuta, environs as 9 TCN towers collapse
Oredola Adeola
A total of nine electricity transmission towers from Tower 56 to Tower 65 along the Papalanto/Abeokuta 132kV transmission lines, operated by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), have collapsed due to the activities of vandals, leading to tripping on the transmission network supplying power Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company (IBEDC) franchise network in Abeokuta, and environs, Ogun State.
Ndidi Mbah, General Manager, TCN’s Public Affairs made this known in a statement obtained by EnergyDay on Tuesday.
According to her, the towers located in the Obafemi Owode area of Ogun State were all massively vandalized, leading to their collapse.
Engr. Mojeed Akintola, General Manager (T) Lagos region, in his comment on the incident, said that the towers collapse was discovered on Monday, after a tripping was recorded, and a team was dispatched to trace the fault, leading to the discovery of the collapsed towers.
He further noted that due to the collapse, the whole of Abeokuta and its environs are presently out of power supply, adding that efforts are ongoing to supply bulk electricity through an alternate line, to enable Ibadan DisCo to distribute electricity to its customers whose supply is affected by the incident.
Engr. Akintola however condemned the activities of vandals, stating that their nefarious acts negatively impact the gird expansion efforts of the company.
He, therefore, lamented that resources that would have been used to further improve the grid infrastructure in Ogun State would now be used to replace the vandalized towers.
TCN in the statement by Mbah further appealed to host communities with transmission infrastructure to work with the transmission company to protect what it described as common national assets.
Busola Tunwase, head media of relations of IBEDC in a chat with EnergyDay confirming the incident apologised to the customers affected for the inconvenience caused by the outages.
She noted that the IBEDC- as the public utility company- affected by the collapse is monitoring the situation with the TCN with a view to keeping the customers updated.
Tunwase further confirmed that IBEDC has deployed its team of engineers to work with TCN to speedily address the outage and reconnect affected customers to the grid network. She added that power would be restored to affected areas based on the timeline provided by the transmission company.
