Once again, large parts of Nigeria were thrown into darkness yesterday following a sudden collapse of the national electricity grid. The system lost over 2,000 megawatts, marking the second major disruption in power supply for 2025.

This incident occurred on the same day the federal government condemned an attack carried out by personnel of the Nigerian Air Force on the headquarters and facilities of the Ikeja Electric Distribution Company (IKEDC). The attack, which took place on Thursday, left several individuals injured and resulted in the vandalisation of equipment.

Meanwhile, the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors (ANED), the umbrella body for electricity distribution companies (DisCos), has called on the Nigerian Air Force, the military, and the presidency to identify and hold accountable the officers from Sam Ethnan Air Force Base in Ikeja responsible for assaulting staff and journalists at Ikeja Disco.

The Director-General of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA), Mr. Adewale-Smatt Oyerinde, also urged the federal government to settle all outstanding electricity debts owed by military bases across the country.

The grid collapse, which occurred around 2pm yesterday, saw power generation drop sharply from approximately 3,366MW to 1,517MW.

In a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), Ikeja Electric alerted customers to the disruption and assured them that relevant authorities were working to restore supply.

“Please be informed that we experienced a system outage today, 07/03/2025, at 14:00hrs, affecting supply within our network. Restoration of supply is ongoing in collaboration with our critical stakeholders,” the statement read.

Similarly, Eko Disco attributed the situation to reduced supply from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), which led to unavoidable load shedding across its network.

“This is to inform you that the current power situation results from a reduced power allocation from our TCN partners aimed at maintaining grid stability. The situation has necessitated unavoidable load shedding across our network. Rest assured, we are taking all necessary steps to address the issue, working closely with TCN and other partners to restore stability as soon as possible,” the company stated.

By 5:30pm, TCN had begun a gradual restoration of power to affected areas.