NISO Disputes Claims of South-East Nigeria Power Blackout

The Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) issued a statement disputing claims of a system collapse that allegedly resulted in a total blackout across the South-East region of Nigeria on February 19, 2026. NISO clarified that at approximately 11:47 hours, a protective trip was recorded on a 330kV transmission line around the Onitsha transmission station.

This trip led to temporary localized outages affecting certain areas supplied by the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC) and the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company (PHED). However, NISO emphasized that the national grid remained stable and fully operational, with no disruption to the system frequency, which stayed within acceptable operational limits.

NISO categorically stated that there was no system collapse at the time reported by certain media outlets, which claimed the incident occurred around 11:54 hours.