Nigeria hit by national power outage after grid collapses

By BBC Monitoring

Nigeria's power grid collapsed on 14 September from suspected equipment failure, causing a nationwide electricity outage, privately-owned the Vanguard website reported.

The equipment failure - reportedly combined with a disturbance on the grid network - reduced power generation to 273 megawatts, down from 4,182 megawatts, the report said.

The national grid had been unstable for days before the power outage, the Vanguard reported, quoting an energy industry leader.

Nigeria is prone to power cuts despite being a major oil, gas and hydroelectricity producer.

The country can produce 12,522MW of electricity daily but generates below 5,000MW, which local media say is insufficient to cover the needs of its 195m population.

Source: Vanguard website, Lagos, in English 14 Sep 23