Nigeria’s electricity network suffered another system failure on Friday, plunging several parts of the country into darkness and cutting off power supply to homes and businesses nationwide.
Findings showed that power generation on the national grid crashed dramatically from over 4,500 megawatts to just 24 megawatts by about 1:30pm, underscoring the scale of the disruption.
The collapse reportedly affected all 23 power generation plants connected to the grid, leaving the country’s 11 electricity distribution companies with zero power allocation.
As of the time of filing this report, the cause of the system failure had not been officially confirmed, with the Transmission Company of Nigeria yet to issue a detailed explanation.
The incident marks the first national grid collapse recorded in 2026 and comes only weeks after a similar outage on December 29, 2025, which also triggered widespread blackouts across the country.
In recent years, repeated grid failures have been linked to technical challenges, poor maintenance of transmission infrastructure and instability in power generation.
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Power sector experts have repeatedly urged authorities to strengthen the grid and put effective backup systems in place to reduce the frequency of collapses.
The latest outage has once again raised questions about the resilience of Nigeria’s power infrastructure, particularly as demand for electricity continues to grow.
Many consumers and businesses were left awaiting restoration of supply, while stakeholders called for urgent reforms to address the persistent weaknesses in the sector.