Only Abuja and Ibadan receive electricity as widespread blackout hits major cities
Millions of Nigerians were thrown into darkness on Monday afternoon following another collapse of the national electricity grid, causing power supply across most parts of the country to fall to near zero.
Distribution load data released at 3:12 p.m. on December 29, 2025, showed a sharp and sudden drop in electricity supplied to power distribution companies, signalling a system-wide failure.
Figures from the Distribution Companies (DisCos) indicated that only two operators received electricity at the time of the collapse. The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company recorded a load of 30 megawatts (MW), while the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company received 20 MW.
All other DisCos were allocated zero megawatts, confirming the nationwide scale of the outage. Benin, Eko, Enugu, Ikeja, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Port Harcourt and Yola electricity distribution companies all recorded 0 MW, leaving major cities and regions without power.
In total, electricity distributed across the country stood at just 50 MW, far below normal operational levels and inadequate to support households, businesses and essential services.
The incident adds to a growing list of grid collapses recorded in recent years, which have frequently resulted in nationwide blackouts and prolonged restoration efforts. The repeated failures have continued to raise concerns over the fragility of Nigeria’s power infrastructure and the reliability of the national grid.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian National Grid (NNG) confirmed that restoration work had commenced following the collapse.
However, as of the time of filing this report, neither the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) nor the Federal Ministry of Power had issued an official explanation for the cause of the grid failure or provided a timeline for the restoration of electricity supply.
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