Low light, long exposure and "landscape" photography like your example is typically where you want to use your manual focus, live view assisted by zooming in. AF points need contrast, and you should point your camera at the edges of the white illuminated walls to preselect focus, confirm the focus is correct, and then place your camera. In concert fotography I have to focus/recompose all the time, to even get AF right 3 out of 4 times. A lot of cameras require F2.8 or faster lenses to have accurate AF under normal light, so in dim light it needs even faster lenses.

But in a static situation like this you might as well go manual, as you need to confirm the AF result anyway. You might as well stop down, too, to around F5.6-F8 where your lens is sharpest (even without DOF considerations). Your dof is infinite at this distance even wide open, assuming normal focal ranges (17-55mm, as you dont mention it).

So the direct answer to your simple question is, yes, it is normal that lack of light leads to inaccurate AF performance, considering F2.8/F5.6 thresholds for AF performance in normal light, and also the type of scene in question, where you need to place the high contrast edges under AF points yourself. And your own experience that manual is more reliable is confirmed, since the hassle of setting up lock focus/recompose with the tri[od setup outweighs the manual focus process with liveview zoom.