Nigeria's national electricity grid suffered another extensive collapse on Wednesday morning, plunging large parts of the country into darkness. This latest incident led to a drastic reduction in power generation, highlighting persistent challenges within the nation's power infrastructure. Data released by theIndependent System Operator (ISO) and confirmed by the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO)revealed that megawatts (MW) generated plummeted from an initial 2,917MW (or 2,917.83MW) to a mere 1.5MW between 11 am and 12 pm.

NISO reported that the grid collapse occurred around 11:20 am, triggered by the tripping of a generation company, which subsequently cascaded across other generating entities, leading to a nationwide cut in supply. During the most severe period of the outage, reports indicated that only 20MW was available to the Ibadan Disco, among the twelve distribution companies operating in the country.

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Restoration efforts commenced thereafter, with supply progressively increasing to 495MW by 3:05 pm and a total of 1,583MW restored by 8:21 pm. Specific distribution companies such as Abuja Disco, Ikeja Electric, and Eko Disco received 243MW, 239MW, and 204MW respectively during the recovery phase.

TheAbuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) was among the first to acknowledge the widespread disruption, issuing a statement via X (formerly Twitter) confirming that the power outage was due to a loss of supply from the national grid at 11:23 am, impacting all its franchise areas. Other Discos, including Kano Disco and Ikeja Electric, also reported similar widespread outages. This incident is not isolated; Nigeria's national grid has a history of frequent collapses, resulting in recurring nationwide blackouts. In 2024 alone, the grid reportedly failed at least 11 times.

Earlier this year, on February 12, another system collapse left parts of Nigeria without electricity. While the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) denied reports of the grid collapsing twice in 2025 around that time, and similarly dismissed collapse reports in January, theNigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) stated in July that no grid collapse was recorded in the first quarter of 2025, although it acknowledged pushing the System Operator (SO) to enhance system coordination.

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In a strong reaction to the persistent instability, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)on Wednesday demanded a comprehensive public audit of the country’s power sector infrastructure and a fundamental review of the privatisation model. NLC President Joe Ajaero accused the federal government of misallocating public resources to what he described as failed private entities. He insisted that the billions of naira earmarked for bailouts should instead be redirected towards a public-led initiative aimed at expanding new generation capacity and overhauling the dilapidated transmission infrastructure, rather than channeling funds to Generation Companies (Gencos) and Distribution Companies (Discos).