NDPHC starts Rigasa project aimed at ending 15-year blackout

Nigeria’s Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) has started a distribution-infrastructure project in Rigasa, a community in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State. In a 24 October report, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) said the company described the project as an effort to end a 15-year blackout in the area. The announcement was about a groundbreaking and construction plan; the network had not yet been reported as complete or energised.

NDPHC General Manager for Corporate Communication and External Relations Nazo Agim described the project as a two-kilometre 11-kilovolt line, a 1.5-kilometre 33-kilovolt line and a 7.5 MVA, 33/11-kilovolt injection substation. Alongside the lines, the substation is intended to transfer electricity from a higher-voltage network into local distribution. NDPHC presented these as infrastructure designed to strengthen supply to residents and businesses in Rigasa. It did not specify the number of customers to be connected or the amount of electricity expected to flow.

Kaduna Deputy Governor Hadiza Balarabe, representing Governor Uba Sani, performed the groundbreaking ceremony on Friday, 23 October. NAN reported that Balarabe called the intervention a response to the community’s longstanding electricity difficulties. NDPHC Managing Director Jennifer Adighije, represented by Executive Director for Networks Babayo Bello, said the company’s interventions extend beyond power generation into transmission and distribution. The statement framed the work as an effort by a generation company to address gaps further along the electricity supply chain.

The project is being facilitated by the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Ideological Group, according to the NDPHC statement cited by NAN. State officials, community representatives and a managing director of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company attended the ceremony. NAN also reported that Rigasa district head Mohammed Idris welcomed the work and the stated aim of expanding electricity access. The report did not give a project budget, contractor, construction schedule, the distribution company’s commissioning role or a date when service might begin.

The “15-year blackout” description is NDPHC’s account of conditions in the community; the duration and geographic scope were not independently documented in the report. The project announcement did not identify a specific fault, disconnection from the grid or distribution-licence issue as the cause. Building new lines and an injection substation would not by itself establish that the outage has ended. Construction, energisation, connection to the distribution network and the reliability of service are separate steps to track.

NDPHC’s statement shows how infrastructure interventions beyond generation can address the part of the supply chain that reaches end users. In Rigasa, the announced assets consist of local lines and a facility intended to transfer power from the transmission network into distribution. The company said it expected the project to improve supply for residents and businesses; NAN had not reported construction progress or evidence of completion at the time of its article.

A later assessment of electricity service would need to identify which neighbourhoods were connected, when the facilities entered service and whether customers experienced more reliable supply. The current announcement describes the project’s start and physical components. It therefore reports that NDPHC began a project intended to end a long-running blackout, rather than that the 15-year outage has already ended.