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Power generation on the national grid crashed from 2,984 megawatts around 4 pm on Thursday to zero megawatts at 5 pm the same day, figures on the country’s grid performance obtained from the Transmission Company of Nigeria showed.
As a result of the collapse of the national grid on Thursday evening, the entire country was thrown into a blackout, leaving millions of homes and businesses without power.
Power generation on the grid could not be restored, as only 76.7MW and 95MW were on the system around 6 pm and 7 pm on Thursday.
This moved up marginally to 283MW around 8 pm, but millions of Nigerians were still in darkness at the time, as the country’s average power generation and supply for over 200 million people in Nigeria is around 4,000MW.
The power grid collapse was confirmed by power distribution companies as they tried absorb themselves from blame for the nationwide blackout.
For instance, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company in a notice to its customers, said, “Please be informed that the current power outage is due to a system failure from the national grid.
“The system collapsed at about 16:28 hours today (Thursday) March 28 2024, causing the outage currently being experienced across our franchise area. We appeal for your understanding as all stakeholders are working hard to restore normal supply.”
Thursday’s power grid marked the fourth time the grid would collapse this year, as the distribution companies revealed that their feeders were rendered inactive, resulting in widespread blackouts across the country.
The collapse of Nigeria’s power grid is now a recurrent phenomenon, as the system has remained unstable, leading to incessant cases of grid collapse.
On February 4, 2024, for instance, The PRIMANEWS reported that power generation on the national grid crashed to zero megawatts around 1 pm that day as the country’s grid witnessed a collapse.
The report stated that data obtained from the power ministry showed that electricity generation on the grid dropped from 2,407MW around 11.53 am to 31MW by noon on that Sunday, before collapsing to 0MW an hour later.
This led to widespread blackouts across the country, as power distribution companies blamed it on the collapse of the grid managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria, an agency of the Federal Government.
Also recall that on December 12, 2023, The PRIMANEWS reported that Nigeria witnessed a system collapse of its national grid, leading to a crash in power generation from 4,032.8MW to 43.5MW the preceding day.
Power generation figures obtained from TCN at the time showed that electricity on the system moved up to 115.4MW around 3 pm on December 11, 2023, before rising further to 240.9MW at about 4 pm.
It climbed to 544.9MW at 5 pm and continued the upward trend, as TCN strived to restore the national.
Commenting on the development at the time, the spokesperson of the transmission company, Ndidi Mbah, confirmed the collapse of the grid but was quick to state that the system was restored by TCN engineers.
“The grid experienced a collapse today (Monday). Presently, it (supply) has been restored except for the Jos axis, which will soon have supply within the hour.
“The collapse happened by 13.49 pm this afternoon. It is now fully restored by 18.51 pm,” she had stated.
Nigeria’s power grid witnessed a series of collapses in September last year, as power consumers lambasted the managers of the system for the incessant crash of the grid.
On September 20, 2023,  Nigeria witnessed another round of widespread blackouts across the country the preceding day as the national power grid collapsed again, making it the third grid collapse in about five days during that period.
This is despite the privatisation of the successor generation and transmission arms of the power sector in November 2013 by the Federal Government.

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