Nigeria has experienced a nationwide blackout after the country’s electricity grid collapsed early on Thursday morning. The grid went down at around 12:40am on September 14, 2023, leading to a massive loss of supply to power distributors nationwide.
The Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which manages the country’s grid, has yet to make any statement about the development. However, the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company Plc (EEDC) has issued a notice confirming the total system collapse.
In the notice, the EEDC said that “all our interface TCN stations are out of supply, and we are unable to provide service to our customers in Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo states.”
The EEDC said that it is “on standby awaiting detailed information of the collapse and restoration of supply from the National Control Centre, Osogbo.”
This is the latest in a series of power outages that have plagued Nigeria in recent years. The country’s electricity grid is notoriously unreliable, and outages are common.
In 2022, the grid collapsed seven times from January to September. And in the past 12 years (2010 to June 2022), the grid has collapsed 222 times at the minimum.
The Nigerian government has pledged to improve the country’s power sector, but progress has been slow. The government has said that it is working to upgrade the national grid and to increase the country’s power generation capacity.
However, it is unclear when these efforts will bear fruit. In the meantime, Nigerians will continue to suffer from frequent power outages.
