By Our Correspondent in Minna
The Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) on
has allayed the fears of Nigerians regarding what it described as fake news indicating that kainji dam has bursted and that the nation faces looming power outage.
The NIHSA Director-General, Mr Clement Nze, in a statement on Monday, therefore, advised Nigerians to disregard the rumour, assuring that “the dam is safe”, saying nothing of such occurred in the dam.
Nze said the Nigeria hydrological services agency worked in collaboration with operators of all major dams across the country, and had not reported any occurrence.
He said after reading the online news, he put a call across to the Hydrologist who was holding a management meeting at the dam site at that moment, adding that the hydrologist told him that there was nothing like that in the dam.
Nze also said that NIHSA’s Gauge Readers working within the catchment area had not reported such incident.
He said:”Nothing happened to the dam, nothing of such, although the dam is full because of what is happening in Niger Republic and excess water, there is no threat whatsoever.
“I can authoritatively confirm that Kainji Dam is safe, no explosion whatsoever in the dam.
The Reporters, an online publication, reports that kainji dam, located in New Bussa town, Borgu Local Government Area of Niger state was constructed by the Yakubu Gowon regime and opened for operation in 1968.
It was designed to have a generating capacity of 960 megawatts (1,290,000 hp) but experts said only 8 of its 12 turbines had been installed, thus, reducing the capacity to 760 megawatts (1,020,000 hp).
Despite the short fall in megawatts, the dam is said to be generating electricity for all the large cities in Nigeria in addition to selling some of the electricity generated to the neighbouring Niger Republic.
