Nigeria Suffers Nationwide Power Outage

Facts

• On Thursday, Nigeria suffered a nationwide power outage due to what several electricity distribution companies described as a 'total system collapse.'¹
• Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu stated that an explosion caused the national grid to collapse after a fire broke out overnight at what is called the 'Kainji/Jebba' power line.²
• Connections were gradually restored, with power generation reportedly rising to just over 1.3K megawatts in the afternoon — still below the daily average of 4.1K megawatts.³
• Nigeria has 12.5K megawatts of installed capacity, but the country's grid power supply is irregular, forcing households and businesses to rely on diesel and petrol generators.⁴
• The nationwide blackout comes days after the federal government celebrated 400 days of the national grid's stability. The last grid collapse occurred in July 2022.⁵
• Parts of Nigeria's power sector were privatized about a decade ago. Power grid failures have been frequent with both the government and power companies often blaming each other.⁶

Sources: ¹BBC News, ²Business post nigeria, ³Reuters, ⁴Al Jazeera, ⁵Daily trust and ⁶Africanews.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by African business. Nigeria's much-touted power sector privatization was supposed to end the country's electricity woes. However, this transition has hardly improved the electricity supply — with generation fluctuating well below installed capacity, and outages continue to frustrate the residents. The government can only achieve a reliable electricity supply by revamping its power infrastructure and increasing its share of renewables.
• Narrative B, as provided by Businessday ng. Nigeria's government has invested billions to improve the dismal state of its electricity supply and increase the performance of distribution and generation companies. Through the Nigeria-Siemens network improvement project, which would deploy ten power transformers and ten mobile substations nationwide, end-to-end operational capacity will increase to 7K megawatts by 2030.

Predictions