Nigeria’s national power grid collapsed completely on Friday, leaving several parts of the country without electricity in the first system-wide outage recorded in 2026.
Data from the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) showed that power generation dropped to zero megawatts at about 1 p.m., while electricity supply to all 11 distribution companies nationwide was fully disrupted.
The affected distribution companies include Benin, Eko, Enugu, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Abuja and Yola, all of which recorded zero load allocation at the time of the collapse.
The development comes months after a series of grid failures in 2025, with the most recent recorded on December 29, raising fresh concerns over the reliability of the country’s power infrastructure despite repeated reform efforts.
The outage also occurred shortly after the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) announced the restoration of an additional 450 megawatts to the national grid following the completion of maintenance work at the Geregu National Integrated Power Project.
In a related effort to improve system stability, NISO had earlier disclosed that on November 9, 2025, it collaborated with the West African Power Pool Information and Coordination Centre to conduct a synchronisation test linking Nigeria’s electricity grid with the wider West African power network.