Global Cloudflare failure disrupts major platforms and Nigerian news sites

A widespread Cloudflare disruption on Tuesday briefly took several major global platforms offline, including X, OpenAI, Canva and Spotify. The issue surfaced after users began filing complaints on Downdetector, prompting checks that confirmed the services were unreachable.

The outage also hit a number of Nigerian news sites — among them TheCable, Premium Times, Nairametrics, PUNCH and The Nation. Visitors to these sites encountered an “internal server error” message tied to Cloudflare’s network.

Cloudflare admitted to a service degradation, noting that some of its systems were operating intermittently. The company said it was working to stabilise operations and shared a series of updates as the situation evolved.

About half an hour after its initial alert, Cloudflare said it had begun to see recovery across its network, though elevated error rates persisted. By 1:43 pm, X appeared to be functioning again.

The company later reported that Access and WARP services had returned to normal levels, while work continued on other affected components.

As of 3:13 pm, several Nigerian websites remained inaccessible.