A fire incident occurred at the Transmission Company of Nigeria transmission substation in Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi State, on Thursday night, engulfing the 330-kilovolt (kV) facility. The exact cause of the fire is yet to be determined.

Residents near the TCN facility, situated behind the mechanic village in Birnin Kebbi metropolis, reported hearing a loud explosion followed by thick flames and smoke from a section of the electric installations around 12:32 a.m.

As of the time of reporting at 1 a.m., the fire was still raging and spreading to other parts of the facility, with no firefighting personnel on the scene.

This incident comes just hours after a fire outbreak on the Kainji/Jebba 330 kV line triggered a nationwide power outage, causing the collapse of the national grid. Adebayo Adelabu, the Minister of Power, revealed that this fire had resulted in a generation loss of about 356.63 megawatts (MW).

He described the sequence of events, stating, “At 00:35Hrs this morning, fire outbreak with explosion sound was observed on Kainji/Jebba 330kV line 2 (Cct K2J) blue phase CVT & Blue phase line Isolator of Kainji/Jebba 330kV line1 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 00:35:07Hrs to zero.”

“At 00:41Hrs frequency dropped further from 49.37 Hz to 48.41Hz then resulted in the system collapse of the grid.”

The Kebbi State Police Command spokesperson, Nafiu Abubakar, confirmed the fire incident but noted that he did not possess specific details about the incident at that time.

He advised contacting TCN for further information on the possible causes of the fire.

Efforts to reach TCN for additional information were unsuccessful at the time of reporting.