Nigeria was plunged into widespread darkness on Monday following the collapse of the national electricity grid.

Checks by our correspondent revealed that the grid went down at about 3:00 pm, disrupting power supply across several parts of the country.

Data obtained from the system operator showed that electricity generation, which peaked at approximately 4,800 megawatts earlier in the day, sharply declined to just 139MW by 3:00 pm.

The exact cause of the collapse could not be immediately ascertained. However, the incident occurred amid ongoing efforts by the Nigerian Independent System Operator (NISO) to ramp up power generation after recent gas supply disruptions caused by pipeline vandalism.

As of the time of filing this report, all 22 power generation plants connected to the national grid had reportedly lost generation, compounding the nationwide outage.

Further updates are expected as authorities investigate the incident and work towards restoring supply.