Football-loving Nigerians had more than one reason to groan about the country’s opening World Cup game: not only did they lose 2-0, many weren’t even able to see the whole match.
Some viewers complained that seasonal rains affected the signal to the satellite television channel broadcasting Saturday’s match against Croatia.
Then, the power went off completely.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) said six power plants were shut down to prevent the “collapse” of the national grid following a pipeline failure and unspecified “technical issues”.
For two days, the grid lost 1 087 megawatts of electricity. By Tuesday, generation had recovered to 3 876.9 MW following repairs of the ruptured pipeline.
The TCN said gas was “gradually building up in most generating stations and in a day or two days it is expected that gas and power supply would be back to normal”.