Power Restored To Lagos And Four Other States After Days Of Blackouts

According to a report by Punch on Monday November 9 2026, the Federal Government has acknowledged electricity disruptions in Lagos, Abuja, Ogun, Kwara and Oyo states, and says power is now being restored after days of blackouts that left homes and businesses in the dark.

The Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe, attributed the outages to gas shortages at thermal plants, reduced hydropower output and maintenance issues, rather than a systemic failure of the national grid. The government said it is working with the relevant agencies to restore supply, and has cleared 44 containers of power equipment from Apapa ports to support the work.

The restoration came after engineers repaired a vandalised 330-kilovolt transmission line between Benin and Egbin, which had cut supply to large parts of the south-west and the Federal Capital Territory. With the line back in service, supply to the Lagos area is back above 1,000 megawatts, while work continues in the remaining affected locations.

Tegbe had earlier blamed the outages on a combination of planned maintenance at Egbin Power Station, inadequate gas supply to some thermal plants and the vandalism of the transmission line. The restoration follows days of blackouts during which the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited and the Nigerian Independent System Operator publicly traded blame over gas supply, each pointing at the other for the shortfall.

For the millions of people in the five affected states, the blackouts were more than an inconvenience. Small businesses that depend on electricity, from cold rooms and barbershops to phone-charging stalls and welders, lost days of income. Households ran generators at a time when fuel is expensive, and those without generators simply waited in the dark.

The 44 containers of power equipment cleared from Apapa ports are part of the same effort. Equipment sitting in a port does not generate a single watt, and clearing it is a small but real step toward fixing the parts of the network that keep failing. Whether the equipment reaches the places that need it most, and how quickly, will be part of the same test as the repaired transmission line.

The return of power is welcome, but the minister’s statement does not say when supply will be fully normal in all affected areas. That is the part residents will be watching. A line repaired is one thing; a grid that holds through the next gas shortage or the next act of vandalism is another.

The episode also raises a familiar question about the power sector: how much of the problem is equipment, and how much is coordination. Gas producers, power plants, transmission lines and distributors all have to work together for the lights to stay on, and when any one of them fails, the blame travels in a circle while homes stay dark.

For now, the lights are coming back on in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Kwara and Abuja. The test will be whether they stay on, and whether the government follows through on the equipment it has cleared from the ports and the repairs it has promised. Until then, residents in the affected states will be counting the hours of supply the way they counted the hours of darkness.

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