Amid recurring challenges, Nigeria faces another widespread blackout due to a national grid failure, affecting millions across the country. Discover the latest updates on the outage and efforts to restore power.
In another blow to Nigeria’s power sector, the national grid has collapsed once more, causing widespread blackouts across the country.
This represents the ninth grid failure in 2024, with several incidents occurring solely in October.
The frequent breakdowns have frustrated citizens and sparked concerns about the dependability of the nation’s power infrastructure.
After the disruptions in October, the Federal Government committed to seeking a permanent solution for the ongoing grid instability.
“URGENT UPDATE: The National Grid experiences another disruption. Restoration efforts are underway, according to a tweet from @NationalGridNg at approximately 3 PM on Tuesday.”
At the time of this report, The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) had not yet confirmed the incident, leaving Nigerians uncertain about the cause of this latest blackout.
On February 4, Nigeria faced its first blackout of 2024 as the national grid collapsed around 11:51 AM. The TCN-operated grid’s capacity fell sharply from 2,407 megawatts to a mere 31MW by noon and was entirely offline by 1 PM.
Last month, Adebayo Adelabu, the Minister of Power, stated that due to the poor condition of Nigeria’s power infrastructure, grid collapses are nearly unavoidable.
The minister emphasized the necessity of establishing power grids across various regions or states to prevent frequent grid failures. Adelabu made this statement on Wednesday during the launch of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company located in Lagos State’s Lekki area.
He explained that establishing multiple power grids in every region and state would guarantee stability. He emphasized that the decentralization of the power sector would facilitate the development of these regional grids, attributing this progress to the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023.
“The Electricity Act has decentralized authority, allowing state and local governments to actively engage in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity,” he stated.
Currently, we all depend on a single national grid. If there’s any disruption to this grid, it impacts all 36 states. This centralized system shouldn’t be the norm. We should work towards developing regional networks and eventually state-level grids for improved resilience and efficiency.
“Each grid will be isolated and separated from the others. This means that if a problem arises in one particular grid, it will only affect the state to which it belongs rather than impacting the entire nation. This is one of the significant effects this Electricity Act will have.”
Further discussing the grid collapse, he stressed that without adequate investment in the sector, such a situation would be unavoidable.
