The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) on Tuesday disclosed that it had so far signed 267 agreements worth about $395 million to provide electricity to un-served and under-served consumers under the Nigeria Electrification Programme (NEP) nationwide.
The agency’s Managing Director, Engr. Salihijo Ahmad, who gave this hint in Abuja during an interactive chat with journalists, explained that the NEP, which aims to provide electricity to rural dwellers, was currently being funded by $350 million World Bank loan and $200 million African Development Bank (AfDB) loan.
According to him, the programme, for which about $64.8 million the commitments have been disbursed to private sector partners for the execution, is expected to provide off-grid reliable and clean electricity supply to 705,000 households, 90,000 micro, small and medium enterprises.
In addition, he explained that the NEP was also designed to provide 100 isolation and treatment centres and 400 primary healthcare centres in un-served and underserved areas of the country.
Ahmad said the agreements signed with private developers had resulted in over a million electricity connections across the country.
The REA boss said: “According to the rural electrification strategy plan, we have targets to reach Nigerians everywhere in the country and the numbers at the moment, are being quoted to be as high as 80 million people.
”To achieve this, a lot of funding is required and what we are used to doing is that every year we wait and get government’s money from the budget, go to the site and then implement the projects.
”However, if you are to do this for the next 100 years, you will not be able to meet those targets hence it became important for the agency to ensure that its mandate does not end at implementation”, Ahmed added.
He explained that with the Rural Electrification Fund, which is private sector driven, the agency became a hub for using government money to attract private investment from different areas to enable it deliver on its mandate.
The REA boss further clarified that, for instance, for the Rural Electrification Fund, provision had been made for a capital subsidy in which case if a project costs N100 million the subsidy will be at 50-60 percent while the private developer would provide the balance to deliver the service to the community and go into an agreement with the community to recoup the balance.
Speaking on the programme, the Head of Programme Management Unit, NEP, Ms Anita Otubu, said that the programme had five components, namely the solar hybrid mini-grid worth $213 million, standalone solar home systems worth $75 millon and the energising education programme $250 million.
She listed the others as including the energy efficient equipment and productive use of appliances worth $20 million and technical assistance which is worth $37 million.
Otubu also disclosed that so far, 67 mini-grids had been completed with 995,396 solar home systems deployed, resulting in the creation of about 1,151 jobs.
