Nigeria’s electricity supply once again faced a significant setback, with power generation plummeting from a peak of 3,594 mega watts around 1:00a.m. yesterday to a mere 42.7MW.

By noon, only the Delta Power plant remained operational on the grid, generating 41MW, while Afam contributed 1.7 MW. This occurrence marks yet another instance of grid instability, coming just five days after two separate collapses within a 12-hour timeframe, leaving the entire nation in complete darkness.

Seen as the weakest link in the power sector, which was privatised 10 years ago, the national grid is managed by the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).

Data on grid collapse showed that in 2013, the country recorded 24 power system collapses. The collapse incidents stood at 13 in 2014. In 2015, the grid collapsed 10 times; in 2016, it rose to 28, while 21 cases were recorded in 2017.

Grid collapse cases in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 were 13, 11, four and four, respectively. It collapsed about 10 times between 2022 and this year.

Recall that Nigeria had borrowed over $7.5 billion from the World Bank, African Development Bank (AfDB), Japan, France Development Agency and other financiers to improve the weak wheeling capacity of the transmission network and the grid.

But stakeholders insisted that gross management bottlenecks that reflect the pre-privatization practices, widespread corruption, political considerations, non-alignment of infrastructure, and the inability of the DisCos to increase their off-taking capacity, among other factors, have made the kind-heartedness of the lenders meaningless and government efforts futile.

While GenCos and DisCos had decried impact of grid collapse on machines and revenue, the prevailing situation remained a violation contract between TCN and Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to ensure that minimum of 5,000MW is transmitted through the grid under the Service Based Tariff (SBT).