Nigeria’s national electricity grid suffered another collapse on Saturday morning, resulting in a nationwide blackout.
Data from the Nigerian system operator indicated that the grid recorded zero megawatts at 9:10 a.m.
This marks the third collapse in one week.
The national grid collapsed eight times in 2024, starting with the first incident on February 4.
Other collapses followed on March 28, April 15, July 6, and August 5.
More recently, Nigerians faced outages on October 14 and 15, disrupting daily activities and economic operations nationwide.
Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu has attributed the frequent failures to aging infrastructure, suggesting that more investment is required to modernize the grid and prevent future collapses.
Adelabu also proposed decentralising the power system, advocating for the establishment of multiple regional grids across states to minimize the impact of failures.
He said the country relies on a single national grid, so if there is a disturbance at the national grid, it affects all 36 states.
With the Electricity Act already allowing state and local governments to participate in power generation, transmission, and distribution, there are growing calls for urgent action.
