Nigeria experienced its sixth power grid collapse of 2021, with electricity generation dropping from 2,583.77MW at 2 am on Monday to just 64.7MW around 3 am.
With an estimated 200 million citizens nationwide, Nigeria typically generates an average of 4,000MW of electricity. However, this falls short of meeting the nation’s needs, as the grid faces recurrent collapses attributed to various factors including gas supply constraints, transmission infrastructure vandalism, and liquidity crisis.
According to data from the Independent System Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria, only one electricity generation company, Ibom Power, remained active during the latest grid collapse on Monday morning. Power generation further declined to 44.5MW around 4 am before increasing to 132.29MW an hour later.
Confirmation of the grid collapse came from the Jos Electricity Distribution Company. Dr. Friday Elijah, Head of Corporate Affairs at JEDC, notified customers that the outage was due to a loss of power supply from the national grid in the early hours of Monday, April 15th, 2024.
While expressing hope for a swift restoration of the grid, Elijah acknowledged the disruption to the normal power supply for electricity consumers.
This incident follows a similar collapse reported on February 5, 2024, where power generation on the national grid plummeted to 59.9MW, leading to widespread blackouts across the country. Power distribution companies attributed the outage to the collapse of the grid managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, an agency of the Federal Government.