NIGERIANS have been plunged into darkness again as the national power grid collapsed for the third time in just one week.
The outages have heightened frustrations nationwide, with businesses, households, and essential services struggling under the country’s unreliable electricity supply.
The third grid failure occurred early Saturday, October 19, causing widespread blackouts across several states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT)
Information from the Nigerian System Operator’s portal showed that the grid hit an all-time low of zero Megawatts (MW) at 8:16 am on Saturday.
The data revealed that all 22 generation companies (GenCos) were non-operational at the time of filing this report.
THE ICIR reports that this collapse marks the eighth disruption to the grid in 2024.
Despite the widespread impact of the blackout, the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) has yet to confirm the incident when filing this report, leaving Nigerians and investors in the dark regarding the cause and resolution of the latest crisis.
On February 4, Nigeria experienced its first blackout of 2024 when the national grid collapsed around 11:51 am. The TCN-managed grid’s capacity dropped from 2,407 megawatts to just 31 MW by noon, ultimately shutting down completely by 1 pm.
Fatimah Quadri is a Journalist and a Fact-checker at The ICIR. She has written news articles, fact-checks, explainers, and media literacy in an effort to combat information disorder.
She can be reached at sunmibola_q on X or fquadri@icirnigeria.org