Nigeria’s national electricity grid suffered its first collapse of 2026 on Friday, triggering widespread power outages across the country and cutting electricity supply to millions of homes and businesses.
Checks showed that power generation fell sharply from more than 4,500 megawatts to as low as 24 megawatts by about 1:30 p.m., highlighting the scale of the system failure.
All 23 power generation plants connected to the grid reportedly lost output during the incident, leaving the country’s 11 electricity distribution companies with zero power allocation.
As of the time of filing this report, the cause of the collapse had not been officially disclosed, with the Transmission Company of Nigeria yet to issue a detailed explanation.
The latest incident comes barely weeks after a similar nationwide grid collapse on December 29, 2025, which also disrupted electricity supply across large parts of the country.
In recent years, power sector experts have attributed recurring grid failures to a mix of technical faults, weak transmission infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, and instability in generation capacity.
The repeated outages have intensified calls from industry stakeholders for stronger contingency measures and sustained investment in grid resilience to curb frequent system failures.
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