Mr. Peter Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate for the 2023 election, has revised his earlier remarks regarding the alleged failure of Nigeria’s national grid.
In a recent post on X, Obi expressed that the frequent failures of the grid, which reportedly occurred 12 times in 2024, have caused Nigerians significant setbacks and hardships. This statement followed a power outage that affected several areas in Lagos on January 11, 2025, which many mistakenly attributed to a collapse of the national grid.
The former Anambra State Governor pointed out that the ongoing issues within Nigeria’s power sector persist despite the government borrowing over $3.23 billion in the past four years to resolve electricity challenges.
However, Obi’s comments triggered a wave of criticism of X, with many Nigerians accusing him of failing to verify the facts before speaking out. This situation prompted the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to clarify that the outage was not due to a grid collapse but rather a result of the tripping of the Osogbo-Ihovbor and Benin-Omotosho lines, labelling the reports of a grid failure as misinformation.
In light of the backlash, Obi backtracked on his previous statement, explaining that his initial reaction was based on information from credible news sources. He acknowledged TCN’s clarification, stating in another post on X that he had learned there was no actual grid collapse.
