JUST IN: Power Grid Suffers Second Collapse in Less Than 24 Hours

Nigeria’s national electricity grid has collapsed once again, marking the second incident within 24 hours. The latest failure occurred at 9:17 AM on Tuesday, October 15, following a previous collapse on Monday evening that left millions of Nigerians without power.

On Monday, the grid collapsed around 6:18 PM, causing a nationwide blackout. Power generation fell sharply from 3.87 gigawatts at 5 PM to zero by 7 PM, plunging the country into darkness. Despite efforts to restore the grid, the system failed again early Tuesday, with power supply dropping to 0.00 megawatts by 10 AM across all regions, extending the blackout.

Several power distribution companies, including the Eko Electricity Distribution Company (EKEDC), confirmed the grid collapse. “Dear Valued Customer, kindly be informed that there was a system collapse at 09:17hrs, resulting in a loss of power supply across our network,” EKEDC said in a statement, assuring customers that they are working with stakeholders to restore electricity as soon as possible.

The recurrent grid failures have raised serious concerns about the stability and reliability of Nigeria’s power infrastructure. This marks the second collapse in less than a day, further highlighting the challenges facing the national grid.

Despite allocations of power supply across distribution companies on Tuesday, including 44MW to Abuja, 62MW to Eko, 85MW to Ibadan, and 72MW to Ikeja, these levels quickly dropped to zero with the second collapse.

The Executive Director of the Electricity Consumer Protection Advocacy Centre, Princewill Okorie, expressed frustration over the frequent grid failures. “It is disheartening that the grid continues to collapse despite increased tariffs. Unmetered customers will still be charged for electricity during these outages, which raises questions about what measures the government is taking to prevent such incidents,” Okorie stated.

The spokesperson for the Transmission Company of Nigeria, Ndidi Mbah, did not respond to inquiries at the time of reporting. Further updates are expected as restoration efforts continue.