Barely two days after the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) celebrated a peak electricity generation of 6,000 megawatts (MW), the national grid crashed to 1,400MW on Friday, plunging the nation into darkness.

The 25 active power plants on the grid were generating about 5,623MW of electricity as of 1:00am on Friday, but generation drastically dropped to 3,585MW by 7:00am and continued to decline until it fell to 1,400MW by 3:00am on the same day.

Some electricity distribution companies had already issued public notices to customers, informing them of a system outage at 2:00pm, which cut them off from the national grid.

A p ublic notice on the X handle of Ikeja Electric stated that the company’s franchise area was off the grid.

“Restoration of supply is ongoing in collaboration with our critical stakeholders,” the utility company noted. Similarly, Eko Electricity Distribution Company confirmed the system disruption, which resulted in a power outage across its network.

“We are currently working with our partners and hope for a speedy restoration of the grid.”

We will keep you updated as soon as power supply is restored,” the company said in a statement. A check on the grid network showed that key power plants, including Afam, Egbin, Geregu, Jebba, Kainji, Olorunsogo, and Okpai, went off the grid at about 2:00pm.

Earlier in the week, Adelabu had announced that on Sunday, March 2,2025, Nigeria achieved a record available power generation of 6,003MW, the highest in the nation’s history.

Commenting on the milestone, the minister said the achievement was the result of the concerted efforts by the Federal Ministry of Power, in collaboration with key stakeholders in the sector, to address longstanding challenges and optimise the nation’s power infrastructure.

A few days before that, TCN had announced a peak transmission of 5,801.84MW and a maximum daily energy delivery of 128,370.75 megawatt-hours (MWh) — the highest ever recorded in Nigeria’s electricity industry.

A statement by TCN management indicated that the feat was achieved on March 4, 2025, at 21:15hrs, signifying a gradual but consistent improvement in the power sector despite existing challenges.

According to the statement: “The peak generation of 5,801.84MW, with a frequency of 49.69Hz, was successfully transmitted by TCN and optimally utilised by the Distribution Companies (DisCos) during peak hours.”