- TCN schedules a four-hour maintenance window at its Kumbotso 330kV substation, cutting power to Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, and Yobe.
- TCN plans an electricity blackout across Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, and Yobe on Sunday, June 28, 2026, for Kumbotso substation maintenance from 9am to 1pm.
TCN plans an electricity blackout across Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, and Yobe on Sunday, June 28, 2026, for Kumbotso substation maintenance from 9am to 1pm.
Millions of residents across Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, and Yobe states will wake today to no grid power after TCN announced a four-hour maintenance blackout running from 9am to 1pm.
The outage stretches beyond Nigeria’s borders. Gazaoua, a town in the Niger Republic, will also lose supply during the window, making Sunday’s shutdown one of the broader scheduled interventions TCN has carried out on the northern grid this year.
TCN disclosed the planned disruption on Saturday through Ndidi Mbah, its general manager of public affairs. But the timing lands hard, coming for residents who already depend heavily on private generators as their primary source of power through most of the week.
Mbah confirmed in the Saturday notice that the shutdown will allow TCN’s contractor to continue upgrading 330kV Bus II jumpers at the Kumbotso transmission substation, replacing existing 350 mm² conductors with higher-capacity 800 mm² conductors to strengthen the network.
Three distribution companies bear the direct impact. KEDCO, parts of JEDC, and parts of YEDC will be unable to off-take power for the duration, cutting supply to customers across Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Azare in Bauchi State, and Nguru in Yobe State.
TCN gave no number for how many customers will be affected. And no contingency guidance was issued for hospitals, cold-chain businesses, or markets in Kumbotso, Tarauni, and Nassarawa local government areas, the communities closest to the 330kV substation that carries Kumbotso’s name.
Sunday’s shutdown arrives against a troubled backdrop for the national grid. Nigeria’s transmission network collapsed three separate times between December 29, 2025, and January 27, 2026, a run of failures that deepened public doubt about the infrastructure underpinning the entire system.
The numbers behind that doubt are stark. Nigeria’s grid typically generates between 4,000 and 5,000 megawatts even on its steadier days, a fraction of the estimated 30,000 megawatts the country actually needs to power its population and economy adequately.
The Kumbotso maintenance is not the only grid intervention affecting the north this week. Documents seen by Westtrybe confirm that TCN separately extended ongoing work on the 276-kilometer Jos-Bauchi-Gombe 330kV transmission line, with disruptions running until June 30, 2026, two days after the Kumbotso outage concludes.
That extension covers the completion of optical ground wire stringing along the Jos-Bauchi-Gombe corridor, a technology designed to improve fault detection and transmission reliability across a line that serves some of the most commercially active zones in the north.
Yet the two exercises together mean northern Nigeria is navigating overlapping grid interventions within the same seven-day window. TCN confirmed power restoration at Kumbotso is expected by 1 pm on Sunday, June 28, 2026, provided no complications arise during the maintenance period.
