Nigeria experienced a widespread nationwide blackout on Thursday, and Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, has shed light on the cause of this massive disruption. The blackout resulted from a catastrophic fire outbreak at the Kainji/Jebba facility in the North-central region.

The incident, which occurred around 12:40 a.m., led to a complete collapse of Nigeria's electricity grid, causing significant power supply disruptions to distributors across the country. Adelabu took to Facebook to provide details on the unfortunate event.

He elaborated that at 12:35am this morning, a fire outbreak with an explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 1 was observed burning. This led to sharp drops in frequency from 50.29Hz to 49.67 Hz at 0:35:06Hrs with Jebba generation loss of 356.63MW. Kainji started dropping load from 451.45 MW at 12:35:07am to zero. At 00:41Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41Hz then resulted in the system collapse of the grid.

Assuring the public that authorities were actively addressing the situation, Adelabu said that they were on top of the situation and speedy restoration is in progress. The fire has been fully arrested and over half of the connections are now up, and the rest will be fully restored in no time.

His sincere appreciation to those who responded or expressed concern via different channels and the team of Engineers for their prompt response to the situation and work done so far. He also explained the delay in sharing updates, stating that delay in update was deliberate, so as not to cause panic and to also be able to update on the progress of remedial actions taken so far. This is to ensure economic and security saboteurs don't take advantage of every situation reported.