If you’ve noticed your fan stopping mid-rotation or your fridge going silent more often than usual lately, you aren’t alone. After a surprisingly stable 2025, it feels like we are back to playing “Up NEPA” roulette. The big question on everyone’s lips is: What exactly is happening to our light?
In less than a month, the national power grid has tripped, stumbled, and fallen three separate times. For a country that only saw two major collapses in the whole of last year, three hits in 30 days feels like a massive step backward.
The January “Blackout” Streak
To understand the frustration, you only need to look at the calendar. We started the New Year with the same old problems:
- December 29, 2025: A “parting gift” from the old year.
- January 23, 2026: A Friday collapse that ruined many weekend plans.
- January 27, 2026: The most recent Tuesday morning trip that left us in the dark.
The “Gombe Ghost” and the Voltage Surge
So, what triggered the latest mess? According to the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO), the culprit was a “voltage disturbance” that started at the Gombe Transmission Substation around 10:48 am on Tuesday.
Think of it like a massive electrical sneeze. This disturbance traveled fast, hitting major substations in Jebba, Kainji, and Ayede. While NISO insists it was only a “partial collapse,” for millions of Nigerians seeing 0.00 MW allocated to their local DisCos (like Abuja or Port Harcourt), it felt pretty total.
From 4,700 MW to Almost Nothing
The numbers behind this collapse are honestly staggering. At 6:00 am on Tuesday, the country was generating a decent 4,762 MW. By 11:00 am, that number had crashed to just 39 MW.
To put that in perspective: we went from powering a nation to barely having enough juice to run a few large streetlights. When generation drops that low, the system simply can’t hold itself up.
Are We Going Back to the Bad Old Days?
The million-naira question is whether we are heading back to 2024, when the grid collapsed almost every other week.
Industry insiders, like Sunday Oduntan from the DisCos, are trying to stay positive. They argue that even though the grid is falling, the speed of restoration is much faster now, which shows that technical teams are “upping their game.”
However, they also admit the “bane of the challenge” hasn’t changed: We simply aren’t generating enough power. As long as our daily generation stays low, the grid remains a house of cards—one “voltage sneeze” away from falling down.
The grid is failing, but your business doesn’t have to. ????
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