Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
Nigeria’s electricity network recorded a grim safety toll in the third quarter of 2025, with 33 people losing their lives, another 33 sustaining injuries, while 57 power-related accidents were reported across the country.
The figures, contained in the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) Q3 2025 report, underscored persistent safety failures within the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI) despite years of regulatory warnings and enforcement efforts.
The accidents, reported by electricity licensees during the quarter, were spread across several distribution zones, highlighting how exposure to unsafe electricity infrastructure remains a nationwide problem rather than a localised one.
According to the report’s accident summary, Ikeja and Kano electricity distribution areas recorded the highest number of incidents during the quarter, with both zones reporting 10 accidents apiece. Ikeja also recorded six injuries and four deaths while Kano posted six deaths and four injuries.
Eko, Kaduna and the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) also featured prominently, while Abuja, Jos, Aba, Port Harcourt, Enugu and Yola recorded varying but still troubling levels of incidents. In many of these cases, accidents resulted in either severe injuries, fatalities, or both.
A closer look at the causes of casualties revealed a pattern of systemic weaknesses. Wire snaps emerged as one of the deadliest hazards, accounting for 10 fatalities and seven injuries during the quarter. These incidents often occur when ageing or poorly maintained lines collapse onto public spaces, residential areas or roads, exposing unsuspecting members of the public to live electricity.
Besides, unsafe acts and hazardous conditions accounted for the highest number of injuries and tied for the highest number of fatalities. Ten deaths and 18 injuries were attributed to unsafe practices or conditions, pointing to a mix of human error, poor safety culture, and inadequate enforcement of operational standards by licensees.
In practice, such incidents frequently involve technicians working without proper isolation of power lines, members of the public tampering with electricity infrastructure, or exposure to live equipment without protective barriers.
Illegal or unauthorised access to electricity installations also contributed to the casualty figures, leading to two fatalities and three injuries during the period under review. These incidents are often linked to energy theft, unauthorised connections and attempts to bypass meters, all of which expose individuals to significant risk while further destabilising the power system.
Vandalism, while responsible for fewer casualties in the quarter, still resulted in two deaths. Acts of vandalism frequently weaken infrastructure integrity, increasing the likelihood of wire snaps, explosions and fires that may not immediately harm the perpetrators but later endanger the wider public. The report also recorded nine fatalities and five injuries under other miscellaneous causes.
Beyond human casualties, the report noted that the TCN recorded four cases of damage to property and infrastructure arising from explosions, fire outbreaks or acts of vandalism during the quarter. These incidents further underlined the economic and social costs of poor safety performance in the power sector, extending beyond personal loss to include damage to critical national assets.
But the regulatory commission said it initiated investigations into all reported accidents and signalled its intention to enforce appropriate actions where necessary. These actions typically range from compliance directives and penalties to mandatory safety audits and corrective measures.
As part of its oversight role, the regulator said it organised periodic health and safety managers’ meetings aimed at improving safety performance across the industry, where it brings together health and safety officers from electricity companies to review incident reports, share lessons learned and identify areas requiring urgent improvement.
Many of the causes identified in the report, such as wire snaps and unsafe acts, have featured repeatedly in previous quarters, suggesting that underlying issues such as infrastructure decay, insufficient investment in maintenance and weak safety culture remain unresolved.
In the same vein, during the period under consideration, the regulator disclosed that it supervised the successful conclusion of two compensation negotiations between electricity companies and families of victims, an indication of ongoing efforts to address the aftermath of such incidents.
However, the report showed that in the previous quarter (Q2) 38 fatalities were recorded, 19 persons were injured, while 60 accidents were posted.
“Relative to 2025/Q2, the number of accidents decreased from 60 to 57, the number of fatalities decreased from 38 to 33, but the number of injuries increased from 19 to 33,” the NERC report stressed.
It added: “During the quarter, all the accidents occurred at the distribution level i.e. neither TCN nor any of the Gencos recorded safety accidents. Although all Discos recorded casualties, the licensees with the highest number of casualties out of the total 66 recorded during the quarter are Ikeja and Kano (10), Eko and Kaduna (8), representing 15.15 per cent and 12.12 per cent of the total, respectively.
“This quarter continues the trend of the distribution sub-segment being the biggest driver of safety accidents in the sector. Discos accounted for 93.33 per cent, 100 per cent and 100 per cent in 2024/Q4, 2025/Q1 and 2025/Q2, respectively,” the NERC report pointed out.
According to NERC, the number of complaints received by Discos in 2025/Q3 was 168,033 across all Discos; representing a 26.06 per cent decrease compared to the 227,267 received in 2025/Q2.
“Ibadan Disco received the highest number of complaints (40,520), representing 24.11 per cent of total complaints received. Yola Disco received the least number of complaints (2,603), representing 1.55 per cent of total complaints received,” the report said.
