Nigeria’s electricity grid suffered another collapse on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, leading to widespread blackouts across parts of the country. The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) confirmed the development in a public notice issued on its official X handle.
According to AEDC, the outage began at 11:23 am when supply from the national grid was lost. The company explained that the incident affected electricity supply across all its franchise areas. In its statement, AEDC assured the public that efforts were ongoing to stabilise and restore power, adding:
“Rest assured, we are working closely with the relevant stakeholders to ensure power is restored once the grid is stabilised. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
The notice also provided customer support lines for further inquiries, emphasising that restoration work was in progress.
The collapse is the latest in a long string of failures that have plagued Nigeria’s power sector. In 2024 alone, the grid collapsed 12 times, while over the last decade it has recorded more than 100 collapses. Earlier in February 2025, Nigerians were also thrown into darkness following a similar system disturbance.
In April 2025, in response to the frequent outages, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) granted approval to six firms and one private university to generate and distribute their own electricity — part of wider reforms aimed at decentralising power supply.
Curiously, in its July 2025 report, NERC claimed that there had been no system collapse in the first quarter of the year, stating:
“There was no incidence of system disturbance on the national grid in 2025/Q1.”
This discrepancy highlights both the fragility of the grid and the inconsistencies in sectoral oversight, leaving Nigerians to grapple with a recurring question: how much longer will the cycle of collapse and restoration continue?
For businesses and households alike, every blackout is more than an inconvenience. It disrupts work, inflates costs, and chips away at trust in a system that has long struggled to deliver reliable electricity. Until the structural issues — from aging infrastructure to weak oversight — are addressed, the promise of stable power supply will remain elusive.
