Mysterious Fire Razes TCN’s Control Room

There are obvious indications that the already poor electricity supply situation across the nation would worsen following a fire incident which occurred at the Afam VI power station Oyigbo near Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
Investigation by The Tide shows that the fire which occurred on Wednesday destroyed the protection and central control equipment of the station.
The General Manager, Public Affairs of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), Mrs Seun Olagunju, confirmed the development on Saturday, saying the equipment damaged were located in TCN’s relay and control room.
Olagunju explained that the incident had prevented the evacuation of guaranteed 450 megawatts of electricity generated by the power station.
She revealed further that the incident occurred at about 6.58am and that , so far, the cause of the fire was yet to be ascertained.
However, Olagunju stated that a response team was mobilised immediately the incident happened to find out the actual cause of the inferno.
According to her, the response team was also mandated to find alternative ways of evacuating the power already generated by the station into the national grid.
She also said that the major cause of low supply across the country was as a result of vandalism of gas pipeline and not the fire incident that occurred few days ago adding that, at present, the station had been reconnected to the national grid.
Olagunju noted that vandalism of gas pipeline led to short supply of gas to the thermal power generating stations.
The TCN spokesperson gave assurance that the company would continue to work toward expanding the nation’s transmission grid in line with its expansion plans for better service delivery.

Chris Oluoh