Nigeria: Outages - Discos Question NNPC, Niso Over Conflicting Accounts

What the report says

Electricity distribution companies in Nigeria have questioned the different explanations offered by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the Nigerian Independent System Operator for recent nationwide power shortages. The report, published by Leadership and carried by AllAfrica, says the dispute has intensified public frustration as outages continue to affect Lagos and other areas, even as sector operators trade blame over the cause of the disruption.

According to the article, Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors managing director Sunday Oduntan said the contradictory accounts from NNPC and NISO were deepening confusion. He said the sector was again showing the kind of blame shifting seen in earlier years, with gas suppliers, transmission operators and generation companies pointing fingers at one another. Oduntan apologised to Nigerians for the prolonged outages and urged the minister of power to bring the parties together.

The minister of power, Joseph Tegbe, urged patience and said meaningful improvement would take three to five years as reforms unfold. He said the recent supply problem was not a nationwide grid collapse, but the result of maintenance at the Egbin power plant and vandalism of a major transmission line serving Lagos. He also said the government was dealing with debt pressures in the power sector, aging infrastructure and sabotage of installations.

Tegbe added that repairs had restored electricity to some affected areas and that the administration was expanding grid capacity for cities while promoting solar mini-grids for remote communities. The article frames the episode as another example of the structural weaknesses affecting Nigeria’s power supply, including transmission bottlenecks, financing gaps and security challenges around critical infrastructure.