by Nurat Uthman
Electricity consumers in several local government areas of Jigawa and Yobe states have been left without supply as a trailer loaded with containers crashed into a power transmission tower in Kano.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria, TCN, in a statement in Abuja said the trailer drove into the base of TCN’s tower T16 located in Gunduwawa Village, Gezawa Local Government Area, Kano State, on Sunday, 11th August, 2024, destroying the tower and causing outage in several communities in the region
According to the company, “At about 9.28am yesterday, August 11th 2024, the Kano–Hadejia 132kV Transmission Line tripped, losing about 16.6MW. Trial re-closure of the line to enable continued bulk power supply failed, prompting the immediate dispatch of a patrol team to survey the line. The team found that a trailer truck carrying a container had hit tower T16 situated in Gunduwawa and destroyed two legs of the tower causing it to buckle and fall.
“The incident caused the tripping of the line, cutting off supply as the tower fell on the container and hit a nearby residential building damaging a part of it. Although no life was lost, the incident has been reported to Gezawa Divisional Police Station and the driver has also been detained”.
TCN General Manager, Public Affairs, Ndidi Mbah explained the accident has put “Hadejia, Gumel, Gagarawa, Nguru, Mallammadori, Birniwa, Kafin-Hausa, Auyo, Guri, Kaugama, Taura, Garki, Maigatari, Babura, Kirikasamma, Machina Local Government Areas in Jigawa and Yobe States in darkness, and presently, there is no alternative source of bulk power supply to two of TCN’s substations, the Gagarawa and Hadejia substations.
“This means that the affected areas will not have supply until the tower is repaired”.
TCN pledged to do “everything possible to quickly dismantle the damaged tower, re-erect a new one and restring the lines to enable the resumption of bulk power supply to the two substations to enable the DisCos offtake power for its customers within the affected areas”.
