What's happening in Nigeria? Nationwide power outage after power grid collapse

Nigeria suffered a nationwide blackout for 10 hours on Thursday, September 14, when the power grid collapsed due to a fire, authorities and distribution companies reported.

The grid has collapsed several times in recent years, and the most recent blackout affected all 36 states and Abuja, the capital, until service was restored to most of the country.

Even media such as The Guardian reported the constant blackouts in the country, which until the early hours of this Thursday, September 14, presented failures, as well as low power generation.

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Also local media, at around 01:00 hours (local time), reported that the total power of the grid was only about 35 megawatts.

While it reached 273 megawatts, three hours later, a small portion of the daily average of electricity generated in recent years of between 4,000 and 5,000 megawatts.

The power collapse comes just a week after the Nigerian Transmission Company celebrated 400 days of stable power.

So far the company itself has not commented on the outages.

A fire in Nigeria was responsible for the nationwide blackout following the collapse of the power grid.

According to the AP news agency, a fire at one of the power plants caused "heavy frequency dips," which led to the widespread grid failure, Nigeria's power minister, Adebayo Adebulu said in a message on X, formerly known as Twitter.

"The fire has been fully stopped and more than half of the connections are restored and the rest will be restored immediately," Adebulu said Thursday afternoon.

The Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), which distributes in southeastern Nigeria, said in an earlier statement that there was a "total system" collapse. "Due to this event ... we are unable to provide service to our customers," spokesman Emeka Ezeh said.

Blackouts are frequent in Nigeria, with power infrastructure in dismal condition.

In 2022, Nigeria at least four collapses in its power grid, which are attributed to technical problems.

Nigerians turn to gasoline-powered generators for subsistence.

The lack of electricity distribution forces millions of Nigerians to resort to gasoline-powered generators.

But gasoline prices have more than doubled this year after the government ended decades of subsidies, and many households and businesses have struggled to find alternative sources.

Nigeria currently generates 4,000 megawatts of electricity daily, some of which cannot be distributed, to a population of more than 210 million, far short of the 30,000 megawatts a day it needs, according to officials.