It was a dry-season afternoon in Abuja, the kind where the heat sits on the city like a lid and every air conditioner in every office is running at full capacity. I was at my desk at De-Lazuli Consult, mid-sentence in a transaction review, when the lights went out. Not a flicker. A full collapse. The generator kicked in seventeen seconds later. I kept writing. Nobody called to ask what happened.
That last detail is the one worth sitting with. We have normalised it.
Nigeria’s national grid collapsed at least eight times in 2024, by some accounts, closer to twelve, cutting power to Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and every major economic corridor in between. Hospitals ran on diesel. Cold chains failed. Small businesses absorbed losses they could not invoice to anyone. By the following morning, the story had moved on. In Nigeria, grid collapse is not news. It is the
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