Nigeria was once again plunged into darkness following the collapse of the national power grid on Tuesday, marking the 10th such incident this year alone.
The power failure affected regions across the country, from the north to the south, disrupting daily life and sparking widespread frustration.
The blackout occurred around 1:50 pm, with power generation dropping sharply. At 12 pm, the grid was generating 3,631 megawatts, but by 2 pm, generation fell to zero, as all 22 power plants on the grid lost supply.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria confirmed that the grid had experienced a “partial disturbance,” caused by a series of line and generator failures.
TCN spokesperson Ndidi Mbah explained that engineers were working to restore power, and by 2:49 pm, supply had been partially restored to Abuja. Efforts to stabilise power across other parts of the country were ongoing.
Mbah, said, “This followed a series of lines and generators trippings that caused instability of the grid and, consequently, the partial disturbance of the system.
Mbah said data from the National Control Centre revealed that a part of the grid was not affected by the bulk power disruption.
“TCN engineers are already working to quickly restore bulk power supply to the states affected by the partial disturbance. Presently, bulk power supply has been restored to Abuja, at 2.49 pm, and we are gradually restoring to other parts of the country.
“We sincerely apologise for every inconvenience this may cause our electricity customers,“ she said.
The blackout affected several major electricity distribution companies (DisCos), including Ikeja, Abuja, Ibadan, Jos, and Enugu.
Each company issued statements notifying customers of the outages, explaining that the disruption was due to a national grid collapse and assuring customers that restoration efforts were underway.
The outage caused significant disruptions in hospitals, schools, businesses, and homes, with many Nigerians criticizing the government for its inability to address the chronic instability of the national grid. Hospitals were especially affected, with some reporting challenges in maintaining critical services due to power loss.
This collapse comes amid growing concerns over the country’s power sector. Despite billions of dollars in investments and loans—such as a $4.36 billion loan package from the World Bank to address Nigeria’s power challenges—grid collapses have continued unabated.
In fact, Nigeria’s national grid has failed 106 times under both the Buhari and Tinubu administrations, with four collapses occurring in less than a month.
In response to the crisis, the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, called for the creation of regional power grids to reduce the dependency on a single national grid, which he described as “in a deplorable condition.”
Adelabu noted that the current infrastructure, in its deteriorated state, would continue to experience frequent collapses until a comprehensive overhaul is undertaken.
“We keep talking about grid collapse,” he said.
“Grid collapse, grid collapse, whether it’s a total collapse, partial collapse, or slight trip-off. This is almost inevitable as it is today, given the state of our power infrastructure, the infrastructure is in deplorable conditions, so why won’t you have trip-offs?
“Why won’t you have collapses, either total or partial? It will continue to remain like this until we can overhaul the entire infrastructure. What we do now is to make sure that we manage it,” he said.
As Nigerians continue to face these frequent blackouts, calls for a complete restructuring and modernisation of the country’s power infrastructure grow louder.
