By Oke Peter
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has announced that a trailer carrying a container drove into the base of TCN’s tower T16 located in Gunduwawa Village, Gezawa Local Government Area, Kano State, on Sunday, 11th August, 2024, destroying the tower and causing outage in several communities in the North Western part of the nation.
According to a statement by the Company, “At about 9.28am yesterday, August 11th 2024, the Kano–Hadejia 132kV Transmission Line tripped, losing about 16.6MW. Trial re-closure of the line to enable continued bulk power supply failed, prompting the immediate dispatch of a patrol team to survey the line. The team found that a trailer truck carrying a container had hit tower T16 situated in Gunduwawa and destroyed two legs of the tower causing it to buckle and fall.
“The incident caused the tripping of the line, cutting off supply as the tower fell on the container and hit a nearby residential building damaging a part of it. Although no life was lost, the incident has been reported to Gezawa Divisional Police Station and the driver has also been detained.
“Unfortunately, this has put Hadejia, Gumel, Gagarawa, Nguru, Mallammadori, Birniwa, Kafin-Hausa, Auyo, Guri, Kaugama, Taura, Garki, Maigatari, Babura, Kirikasamma, Machina Local Government Areas in Jigawa and Yobe States in darkness, and presently, there is no alternative source of bulk power supply to two of TCN’s substations, the Gagarawa and Hadejia substations. This means that the affected areas will not have supply until the tower is repaired.
The Company, however pledged to do everything possible to quickly dismantle the damaged tower, re-erect a new one and restring the lines to enable the resumption of bulk power supply to the two substations to enable the DisCos offtake power for its customers within the affected areas. A contractor has already been contracted to reconstruct the tower, he is expected to mobilize to the site of the incident today,” the statement said.
