As Blackout Reaches 10th Day In North, Experts Seek Permanent Solution

The Centre For Information Technology And Development (CITAD) has organised a session with experts from various sectors including the power sector, academia and politics to speak on the current persistent electric power blackout in the Northeast, Northwest and some parts of the North Central.

In his opening address, yesterday in Kano, the principal managing director of CITAD, Dr. Yunusa Zakariya’u, explained that it is important to move away from complaining on the issue and proffer a permanent solution to it.

“Without power, everything is grounded, nothing works, so one can imagine what is happening in the past one week in the north.

“It is important to move away from complaining and find out what a permanent solution to it will be.
“This forum is therefore beyond just the talks, the panel of experts will tell us what is happening. Is not just that electricity be restored, but must never happen again,” he said.

Some of the speakers who spoke to newsmen at the end of the gathering, lamented over the entire system of power generation, transmission and distribution, calling for a complete overhaul of the system.

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The general manager of Kano Distribution Company, Egnr Qasim Abdullahi, described the current problem and promised to overcome it soon.

“On the 13th of October, there was a vandalism that happened in the towers of the 330KV line. The transmission company has done awareness about that.

“Then transmission switched over transmission to Kano through Benue Makurdi Jos line.

Then on the 21st of October, that same line in Jos too had a fault. Since then, the transmission engineers have been working on rectifying all this.

“There are multiple of faults along the Makurdi, Jos Kano line and that is the reason why we are in this darkness. However, they will soon overcome it,” he said.

The former Commissioner for Information in Adamawa State expressed the need for power to be enhanced across the country. He explained that the country does not have enough power, and a change from the current radial system of transmission, which whenever there is a fault at one point, affects everywhere needed to be addressed.

“It was a mistake to have centralized the transmission centre for the entire country in Osogbo, Osun State. Imagine that everywhere in this country gets its power supply from Osogbo.

“From Osogbo, only two transmission lines are linked to the entire north. Whereas there are other regions with up to five and eight and even nine lines, but the entire north has only two.

“There is immediate need for more new lines to be channeled to the north. Our state governments in the north must also generate power for transmission in the north. We have all the required resources,” he stated.