ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigeria’s national power grid collapsed again on Friday, January 23, 2026, leaving parts of the country without electricity and disrupting supply to households and businesses.
Electricity generation dropped sharply from more than 4,500 megawatts to as low as 24 megawatts as of 1:30 p.m., according to checks by a correspondent.
All 23 power generation plants connected to the national grid reportedly lost output during the incident, resulting in zero power allocation to each of the 11 electricity distribution companies.
The cause of the collapse could not be immediately determined.
Officials of the Transmission Company of Nigeria had not issued a detailed statement at the time of filing this report.
The outage was the first grid collapse recorded in 2026, coming weeks after another national grid failure on December 29, 2025, that also caused widespread power outages.
PUNCH Online reported that in recent years grid collapses have been linked to technical faults, inadequate maintenance of transmission lines and fluctuations in generation capacity.
Stakeholders have called on the government and power operators to introduce stronger contingency measures to reduce repeated failures.
