Around 4 pm on Thursday, power generation on the national grid fell from 2,984 megawatts to zero megawatts at 5 pm the same day, according to figures from the Transmission Company of Nigeria.
The whole country was plunged into a blackout on Thursday evening due to the national grid collapse, leaving millions of homes and businesses without power.
Power generation on the grid couldn't be restored, with only 76.7MW and 95MW on the system around 6 pm and 7 pm on Thursday.
This increased slightly to 283MW around 8 pm, but millions of Nigerians were still without power at that time, despite the country's average power generation and supply for over 200 million people in Nigeria being around 4,000MW.
The power grid collapse was confirmed by power distribution companies as they sought to absolve themselves from blame for the nationwide blackout.
For example, the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company informed its customers that the current power outage was due to a system failure from the national grid.
The system collapsed at about 16:28 hours on Thursday, March 28, 2024, causing the outage currently being experienced across the franchise area. Stakeholders are working hard to restore normal supply, and understanding is appealed for.
Thursday's power grid collapse marked the fourth time the grid had collapsed this year, and 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 recurring phenomenon, with the system remaining unstable and leading to frequent grid collapses.
For instance, on February 4, 2024, The PUNCH reported that power generation on the national grid dropped to zero megawatts around 1 pm as the country's grid witnessed a collapse.
According to data obtained from the power ministry, 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 resulted in 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, on December 12, 2023, The PUNCH reported that Nigeria witnessed a system collapse of its national grid, leading to a drop in power generation from 4,032.8MW to 43.5MW the preceding day.
According to power generation figures obtained from TCN at the time, electricity on the system increased to 115.4MW around 3 pm on December 11, 2023, before rising further to 240.9MW at about 4 pm.
It went up to 544.9MW at 5 pm and continued the upward trend as TCN worked on restoring the national grid.
Ndidi Mbah, the spokesperson of the transmission company, confirmed the collapse of the grid at the time but was quick to state that the system was restored by TCN engineers.
Presently, the grid has been restored except for the Jos axis, which will soon have supply within the hour.
She said the collapse occurred at 1:49 pm today and was completely fixed by 6:51 pm.
In September last year, Nigeria's power grid experienced a series of collapses, and power consumers criticized the system managers for the frequent grid failures.
On September 20, 2023, Nigeria experienced widespread blackouts the day before as the national power grid collapsed again, marking the third collapse in about five days during that time.
This happened even though the Federal Government privatized the generation and transmission arms of the power sector in November 2013.
