The Senate plenary was Tuesday thrown into total darkness as power outage hits the National Assembly complex of Abuja.
The outage, described as a technical glitch, occurred as senators gathered for the scheduled proceedings on Tuesday, March 5, 2024.
The development threw the Red Chamber into partial blackout as the lawmakers awaited the restoration of power supply.
President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, would later commence plenary after power was restored some minutes later.
The power problem in Nigeria had been made worse with the removal of fuel subsidy which escalated the pump prices of petroleum and diesel products to all time high in the history of the country.
The national grid collapse had become a regular feature in the country in the last nine months.
While the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) and Electricity Distribution Companies had recently absorbed themselves of the epileptic power supply, it blamed the problem on generation.
Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) on January 25, 2024, said that shortage of power supply across the country was caused by decrease in power generation.
TCN, explained that the gradual decrease in available generation into the national grid was caused by gas constraints to the thermal generating companies.
It said the development has impacted the quantum of bulk power available on the transmission grid for onward transmission to the distribution load centres nationwide.
The State Online recalls that this is not the first time this national disgrace wil be occurring.
It was a mild drama at the National Assembly three months ago, when the Minister of Power himself, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, was bewildered when power went off while he was making a presentation in defence of the N344 billion budget for the power ministry.
Lawmakers at the National Assembly, both members of the House of Representatives and the senators had gathered during a joint committee session to hear from the minister why the government should allocate a total sum of N344 billion for the ministry and it’s agencies, but while the minister was speaking in defence of the budget, light went off.
This prompted the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Enyinnaya Abaribe, to say that what the minister has been saying is implicative.
This incident also prompted one of the oldest senators in the 10th Assembly, Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi, to ask the minister of power when Nigeria is going to have stable power supply./PLEASE SHARE
