By Onu Okorie

Residents and businesses across five Nigerian states and parts of Niger Republic faced a temporary blackout Sunday as the Transmission Company of Nigeria carried out scheduled maintenance on a critical 330-kilovolt transmission line.

The planned outage, which ran from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., affected consumers in Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, and parts of Bauchi and Yobe states. Customers in Gazaoua, Niger Republic — connected to the same transmission network, were also cut off during the period.

At the heart of the shutdown was the Mando–Kumbotso 330kV Transmission Line, one of the key arteries in Nigeria’s national power grid. TCN maintenance crews used the window to carry out the company’s annual maintenance exercise and to repair a damaged Red Phase Conductor on Tower T187 along the line route.

The outage automatically rendered the Kano Electricity Distribution Company KEDCO, unable to receive bulk electricity supply from TCN for onward distribution to its customers throughout the maintenance window.

In a notice signed by Ndidi Mbah, General Manager of Public Affairs, and issued a day before the outage, TCN described the work as necessary “to ensure the continued reliability and stability of power supply across the affected region.”

Industry experts have long stressed that routine maintenance of transmission infrastructure is essential to preventing catastrophic system failures, particularly as electricity demand continues to climb across the country’s northern corridor.

TCN assured customers that normal supply would be restored immediately upon completion of works, while appealing for patience from those affected. “TCN apologises for any inconvenience this will cause consumers in the affected areas,” the company said in its statement.