The Nigerian national grid has suffered yet another setback, with details of the incident emerging through the official handle of the Nigeria National Grid on X.
This development follows a series of collapses late last month, when the grid reportedly failed three times within a single week, highlighting ongoing challenges in the country’s power infrastructure.
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The latest grid collapse brings the total number of incidents in 2024 to nine, signaling persistent instability. The national grid’s handle posted, “BREAKING: National Grid suffers another setback. Restoration soon!” around 3 PM on Tuesday. However, as of this report, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has yet to issue any statement on the cause of this blackout, leaving Nigerians without official explanations for the power disruption.
The national grid has been vulnerable to frequent failures this year. In February, Nigeria experienced its first major blackout of 2024 after a collapse that slashed grid capacity from 2,407 megawatts to a mere 31MW within an hour. By 1 PM on February 4, the grid was entirely offline, creating widespread outages.
Adebayo Adelabu, Nigeria’s Minister of Power, recently addressed the situation, describing grid collapses as “almost inevitable” given the condition of the nation’s power infrastructure. Speaking at the launch of Hexing Livoltek, an electricity meter manufacturing company in Lagos last month, Adelabu pointed to the need for a more decentralized power system. “We all rely on a single national grid today; if there is a disturbance of the national grid, it affects all 36 states. It shouldn’t be like that,” Adelabu noted, advocating for regional or state-level grids to limit the impact of failures.
Adelabu further explained that the Electricity Act signed by President Bola Tinubu in 2023 provides a path for decentralizing power distribution. The Act enables subnational governments, including states and local governments, to participate in power generation, transmission, and distribution. Adelabu believes this legislative framework will pave the way for establishing independent grids at regional and state levels, which would mitigate the nationwide impact of future failures.
“This Electricity Act has decentralized power,” he said. “It has enabled all the subnational governments…to participate in the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity.”
He emphasized that each grid could be isolated, allowing issues in one area to be contained. “If there’s a problem with a particular grid, only the state where it belongs will be affected, not the entire nation. So, this is one of the impacts this Electricity Act will have,” Adelabu explained, highlighting the importance of sector investment to avoid frequent collapses in the future.
