Dare Babalola
Nigeria’s national power grid crashed again on Tuesday, marking the second time in four days.
Power generation dropped to just 39 megawatts at 11 a.m., down from 3,825 MW as of 10 a.m.
Power generation had peaked at 4,762 MW as of 6 a.m. on Tuesday.
This is the second grid collapse in January 2026 and the third in less than one month. The national grid previously collapsed on December 29, 2025, and more recently on Friday, January 23, 2026.
As the grid collapsed on Tuesday, load allocation to the distribution companies was 0.00 MW, indicating that no Disco was supplying electricity at the time of the incident.
The Nigerian Independent System Operator has yet to explain the cause of the current grid collapse.
NISO confirmed that the outage occurred at about 12:40 p.m., following the simultaneous tripping of several 330kV transmission lines.
Responding to Friday’s grid collapse, NISO said in a statement that the combined incidents resulted in a total collapse of the interconnected national grid.
“The Nigerian Independent System Operator wishes to inform the public that at approximately 12:40 hours on Friday, 23 January 2026, the national grid experienced a system-wide disturbance, which resulted in a total outage across the interconnected network,” the statement read.
