The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) says it has restored power supply to areas affected by the early morning explosion, which brought down its five 33KV Towers through the activities of vandals in the Isheri area of Lagos.
Sule Abdulaziz, the TCN Managing Director, made this known during his visit to the site of the incident on Friday evening in Lagos.
Abdulaziz said that TCN had energised the second 330KV Akangba-Ikeja West line, which before the fire incident, served as a redundant line in that axis, in keeping with TCN’s N-1 reliability criteria.
“The second 330KV line which tripled during the incident was patrolled by TCN engineers and certified okay before it was energised.
“Line II was energised at about 2.38 p.m on Friday and now wheels 121MW to the Akangba Transmission Substation.
“This means that areas under Ikeja Disco, whose supplies were affected by the pipeline fire incident, will now have a normal supply of electricity,” he said.
In view of the importance of transmission line redundancy, Abdulaziz said that TCN had already directed two contractors to mobilise to the site and commence the reconstruction of the towers and 330KV line on Monday.
On the level of damage done to the towers, he condemned the act of vandalism by the vandals, adding that the damage to the towers was massive.
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“The damage is very great; the transmission line is carrying 145 Megawatts and you can imagine on a whole day if you cannot transmit the power supply.
“Secondly, it will take a lot of money and time before the towers could be restored; so, it is a great loss to Nigerians,” he said.
The managing director reiterated the need for everyone to be part of the fight against the vandalism of the nation’s assets.
“I am advising the vandals to stop destroying the nation’s assets; they should look out for legitimate work to do.
“Government property is everyone property; so by destroying the towers, you are taking us back. We are going to spend money which is not in the budget to repair these towers.
“If we want the nation to move forward, they should stop these activities,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that tragedy was averted on Friday at Isale-Odo, LASU Road in Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State, following the containment of a pipeline explosion.
