Millions of Nigerians were thrown into darkness on Monday afternoon following yet another major collapse of the national electricity grid.
The system failure, which occurred at approximately 3:00 pm, resulted in a near-total loss of power across the country’s distribution networks. The collapse was swift and severe; while power generation had peaked at a promising 4,800 megawatts earlier in the day, data obtained showed that output plummeted to a mere 139MW by mid-afternoon.
The scale of the failure is highlighted by the status of the country’s energy infrastructure. At the time of this report, all 22 power plants connected to the national grid had lost generation entirely, leaving the system struggling to maintain even a fraction of its capacity.
While the Nigerian Independent System Operator (ISO) has not yet confirmed the specific technical cause of the collapse, the incident comes during a period of intense pressure on the sector. Authorities have recently been battling significant gas supply constraints, largely attributed to the persistent vandalism of critical pipelines.
Before the crash, technical teams were reportedly making progress in ramping up generation to stabilize the national supply. However, this latest setback has effectively reset those efforts, leaving major cities and industrial hubs without electricity.
The Nigerian Independent System Operator is expected to provide further updates as engineers work to black-start the system and restore the 22 affected plants to the grid.
