Nigeria’s electricity grid collapsed in the early morning of April 15th. The state-owned power transmission company released a statement claiming that a fire had erupted at a power generating station in the south around 3:00 am that had caused the grid collapse for large parts of Nigeria. The system was restored by early afternoon by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, but people still have been expressing their complaints about the frequent outages and Nigeria’s inability to provide power to its citizens. Nigeria’s grid has collapsed a total of five times this year. Nigeria has also had trouble with gas shortages and debt in its electricity sector. Nigeria has tried to combat the electricity grid problems by raising tariffs for wealthier consumers and the 15% of consumers who currently use the most power by 230% but their attempts have remained unsuccessful.
I think that this article is important because Nigeria is the most densely populated nation in all of Africa and has faced several issues resulting from the grid issues. If there are further power issues with the electricity grid then Musiliu Oseni (the head of the Nigerian electricity regulator) may face some backlash from the general public who rely on electricity for daily life and from the wealthy consumers whose tariff increase has had no effect on ensuring a reliable electricity grid. The power outages will have a strong effect on the region because the economy takes a hit when businesses aren’t able to operate because of the power outages.
Nigeria’s grid collapses apply to class because Nigeria’s policies tie into Socio-Economic Cleavages because there’s a division in the policies that apply to the wealthier populations of Nigeria and the working and middle-class populations. Grid collapses can also potentially pose a major security issue for Nigeria if they don’t have stable electricity access to protect themselves from possible attacks from other countries or deter intrastate conflicts. Protests could also arise which may be a threat to officials currently in power in Nigeria in upcoming elections.