{"id":63798,"date":"2025-04-04T13:46:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T13:46:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=63798"},"modified":"2025-04-04T13:46:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T13:46:19","slug":"illegal-mining-threatens-national-power-grid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/04\/04\/illegal-mining-threatens-national-power-grid\/","title":{"rendered":"Illegal Mining Threatens National Power Grid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adenike Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Transmission Company of Nigeria has issued a strong warning about the growing danger of illegal mining and vandalism near critical power infrastructure in Enugu, which it says could trigger nationwide blackouts.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking during a recent inspection at New Centenary City Estate in Enugu, Dr Thomas Inugonum, General Manager for the region, said unauthorized excavation around transmission towers is weakening their foundations and increasing the risk of collapse, especially during storms.<\/p>\n<p>An excavator was seen in active operation close to the high-voltage towers, and the protective stone pitching around the tower bases had been removed\u2014further heightening fears of structural failure.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Inugonum stressed the urgency of the matter, recalling a past incident in which northern Nigeria was plunged into darkness due to a similar tower failure.<\/p>\n<p>He warned that continued neglect could result in another major grid collapse, affecting power supply from key generation hubs in Port Harcourt and Ikot Ekpene to the north.<\/p>\n<p>In a related development, TCN also reported the complete vandalism of a N20 billion power substation in Okigwe, Imo State.<\/p>\n<p>The facility was stripped of vital equipment days before it was scheduled to begin operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese acts are setting us back in our efforts to boost electricity delivery,\u201d Dr Inugonum said, calling on government agencies and security bodies to step in immediately and protect the country\u2019s fragile energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adenike Lawal The Transmission Company of Nigeria has issued a strong warning about the growing danger of illegal mining and vandalism near critical power infrastructure in Enugu, which it says could trigger nationwide blackouts. Speaking during a recent inspection at New Centenary City Estate in Enugu, Dr Thomas Inugonum, General Manager for the region, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":63799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-63798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63798"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63800,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63798\/revisions\/63800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}