Nigerians are once again facing widespread power outages following the collapse of the national power grid for the third time in one week.
The latest grid failure occurred early on Saturday morning, plunging many states into darkness.
Data from the Nigerian System Operator’s portal (niggrid.org) indicated that by 8:16 AM, the grid had reached an unprecedented zero megawatts (MW) output, with all 22 generation companies (GenCos) offline at the time of the report.
This marks the eighth grid collapse in 2024, following two earlier incidents in the same week.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has yet to provide an official explanation for the incident, leaving Nigerians without clarity on the cause of the blackout.
Earlier this year, Nigeria’s power grid suffered its first collapse on February 4, when grid capacity plummeted from 2,407MW to just 31MW by noon, eventually shutting down completely by 1 PM.
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, addressed the ongoing grid issues on Friday, explaining that grid collapses are nearly inevitable due to the poor state of the country’s power infrastructure.
Adelabu stressed the importance of decentralising the power sector by establishing regional or state power grids to prevent nationwide blackouts.
Speaking at the unveiling of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company in Lagos, Adelabu highlighted that the 2023 Electricity Act, signed by President Bola Tinubu, has paved the way for such decentralisation.
The act enables state and local governments to participate in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution.
Adelabu emphasised that relying on a single national grid is unsustainable and noted that having regional or state grids could mitigate the impact of future grid collapses. T
his system would isolate grid failures to specific regions, ensuring that not all 36 states are affected simultaneously.
Without sufficient investment in the power sector, Adelabu warned that further grid collapses are inevitable, reinforcing the need for structural changes to ensure stability in Nigeria’s electricity supply.
