Nigeria’s national power grid, managed by government-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria TCN, collapsed for the second time in August, culminating in the tenth time of collapse in 2021.

The system collapse was confirmed by distribution companies across Nigeria, including Eko Electricity Distribution Company, Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company, and Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, in notices sent to their customers through their social media accounts.

“The current power outage is due to a nationwide system collapse that occurred at about 13:06hrs. Power supply will be restored gradually to various parts of the network as soon as the grid is stabilized,” Ikeja Electric Plc wrote in a facebook statement. 

The operators of the power grid could prevent a total black out through the use of a spinning reserve, a generation capacity that is online but unloaded and that can respond within 10 minutes to compensate for generation or transmission outages, but the spinning reserve is unavailable at the moment.

Economic and social activities of Nigerians are disrupted anytime there’s a national grid failure, worsening blackouts and already limited rationed power in many parts of the country.