Businesses, homes count losses as electricity grid collapses again

Nigeria was on Wednesday thrown into darkness as the national grid operated from Osogbo in Osun State collapsed, leaving homes and businesses in losses.

The grid went down at about 11:34 AM, affecting all feeders and disrupting electricity supply to customers.

While the Nigerian electricity grid collapsed about 12 times last year, the grid on Wednesday once again threw the country into darkness as the national grid operated from Osogbo in Osun State collapsed.

The grid went down at about 11:34 AM, affecting all feeders and disrupting electricity supply to customers.

Multiple utility companies operating across the 36 states confirmed the development as the companies, who are already losing their market share to alternative energy sources, apologised to customers over the reoccurring issue.

The companies, in public notice issued to customers, noted that efforts to restore power were already underway in collaboration with critical stakeholders.

Ikeja Electric, which serves a part of Nigeria’s industrial hub, Lagos wrote on X: “Dear Esteemed Customer, please be informed that we experienced a system outage today, February 12, 2025, at 11:34 hrs affecting all our feeders. Restoration of supply is ongoing in collaboration with our critical stakeholders. Kindly bear with us.”

At about 11am yesterday, major power plants, including, Geregu, Olorunsogo, Kainji, Jebba as well as Omotosho went off the electricity grid, crashing the supply on the grid to about 1,200 megawatts.

Azura was also off from the grid for over two hours before the plant returned about 2pm. The plant had down from 420MW at 11am to zero megawatts by 12pm before starting at 83MW by 2pm.

As at the time of this report, Egbin power plant, in the Ikorodu side of Lagos, which was generating about 617MW at 11am crashed to zero and was yet to get back on the grid. Odukpani, in Calabar also went down from its 292MW at 11am to zero megawatts.

In 2024, Nigeria’s 21 active electricity generation plants on the nation’s electricity grid recorded over N229.6 billion in loses to grid collapses, a development which is worsening the liquidity crisis in the power sector.

This is as stakeholders in the upstream segment of the power industry said the frequent ramping down of generation equipment is putting pressure on foreign exchange as most spare parts failing more than projected due to state of transmission infrastructure.