Abuja, Nigeria – The national electricity grid collapsed once again on Tuesday morning, marking the second failure in less than 24 hours. This latest collapse occurred at 9:17 a.m., leaving the country in a total blackout.
The incident follows Monday’s collapse, which took place at 6:18 p.m., reducing power generation from 3.87 gigawatts at 5 p.m. to 3.56GW by 6 p.m., before dropping to 0.00GW by 7 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively. By 10 a.m. on Tuesday, grid supply had completely fallen to 0.00MW, affecting all regions of the country.
Various power distribution companies (DisCos) have confirmed the situation. The Eko Electricity Distribution Company issued a statement confirming the system collapse and expressing hope for a speedy restoration. “Dear Valued Customer, kindly be informed that there was a system collapse at 09:17hrs, which has resulted in a loss of power supply across our network. We are currently working with our partners and hope for a speedy restoration of the grid.”
Ndidi Mbah, spokesperson for the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), did not respond to inquiries regarding the grid failures.
During Monday’s collapse, the allocation of power supply across several distribution companies included Abuja receiving 44MW, Benin with 35MW, Eko receiving 62MW, Enugu with 40MW, and Ibadan being allocated 85MW, among others. These allocations were insufficient for normal operations, contributing to the total blackout after Tuesday’s collapse.
Speaking on the repeated grid collapses, Princewill Okorie, Executive Director of the Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Centre, expressed concern over the grid’s instability despite the recent increase in electricity tariffs. He questioned what steps the government is taking to address the recurring issue and lamented that unmetered customers would still be billed during the outage periods.
The frequency of grid collapses raises significant concerns about the reliability of Nigeria’s electricity infrastructure, with experts calling for urgent measures to prevent further disruptions.