Barely 24 hours after a government committee submitted a report on the frequent collapse of the national grid, the nation’s national power control collapsed again on Thursday, throwing the country into a total blackout, just one day after a partial collapse.
Data from the Nigerian System Operator’s portal (niggrid.org) indicated that power generation fell to zero megawatts at 11:30 a.m., impacting all 22 operational generation companies nationwide.
This latest collapse comes after a partial grid failure two days ago, as the Transmission Company of Nigeria continues to struggle to maintain a stable electricity supply.The country’s first major blackout of the year occurred on February 4, with further breakdowns recorded on August 5 and three times in October. Another on October 14 led to a partial outage the next day, and a subsequent disturbance on October 19 nearly caused another complete collapse.
On Wednesday, a day before the current collapse, the committee investigating the frequent collapse of the nation’s central power control identified poor maintenance practices and outdated equipment as primary reasons for the frequent national grid collapses, which have recently disrupted power supply multiple times. According to the panel’s findings, high voltage levels exceeding equipment capacity led to blackouts on October 14 and 19, 2024.
Nafisatu Asabe Ali, Head of the government’s investigative committee, highlighted that shattered lightning arrestors, and equipment explosions at Jebba and Osogbo transmission stations contributed to the outages. Specifically, she noted that a broken lightning arrestor and the absence of a second shunt reactor at Jebba led to high-voltage exposure, which damaged insulation over time. She added that Jebba’s equipment, dating back to 1968, exemplifies the pressing need for upgrades.
Adetayo Adegbamila, an electricity consumer tweeted, “That’s the second time in the past 10 hours….It’s crazy what’s happening at @TCN_NIGERIA.”
His tweet highlights concern over the frequency and duration of outages, which have significantly worsened in recent months.
Similarly, user @osunsinatolu criticised the government’s recent decision to remove fuel subsidies in light of the continued power issues.
“A country that has not fixed its electricity issue should not be removing fuel subsidies,” the tweet read.
“National grid issues every time, and you can’t even afford to buy fuel. This is annoying.”
In another post, @timiPR remarked on the grid’s deteriorating reliability compared to previous years, stating, “This national grid used to collapse like once every 4-6 months back then but look at what is going on now. It goes off almost every week now. It went off 2 days ago, yeah? Now it’s down again.”
Blackouts are frequent in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with over 200 million people, due to ageing power infrastructure, vandalism and inadequate gas supply for its thermal plants, which account for over 75 per cent of output.
Although Nigeria has the infrastructure to generate about 13,000 megawatts of power, its creaking grid can only distribute a third, forcing businesses and households to run costly fuel generators.
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