Power consumers and businesses were thrown into darkness on Wednesday as the industrial action embarked upon by electricity workers, led to the total shutdown of the national power grid.
The strike lasted for almost one day.
Power generation crashed below 4,000 megawatts as workers of the National Union of Electricity Employees went on strike to protest against a compulsory promotion interview for principal managers, and unpaid entitlement, among other issues.
Although the Federal Government announced on Wednesday night that the union had halted the strike, it had earlier declared that the action by the electricity workers resulted in a collapse of the country’s grid.
“Following the industrial dispute declared by the two in-house unions at the Transmission Company of Nigeria, the national electric power grid has been shut down by union functionaries – even as the unfettered effort was being made to resolve the issues upon which the action was called,” the government stated in a statement from its power transmission company.
It added, “The incident occurred at 15:01hours today (Wednesday) after several 330kV transmission lines and 33kV feeder-lines across the power system network had been switched off by the union members, resulting in generation-load imbalance and multiple voltage escalations at critical stations and substations.
“Regrettably, this is coming weeks after we had emerged from a hectic grid management regime, precipitated by the paucity of generation, which we grappled with for a couple of months.”
