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The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has announced that 15 universities across Nigeria now enjoy stable electricity following the completion of solar power projects under its renewable energy intervention programmes.
Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the agency, Abba Aliyu, disclosed this during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, saying the institutions have been fully connected to solar farms as part of the agency’s drive to improve electricity access through clean energy.
“We also have completed our interventions in the universities where we completed 15 universities as of today. All these universities now are fully connected with the solar farms,” Aliyu said.
He explained that the intervention forms part of the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project, which aims to expand electricity access nationwide using renewable energy technologies.
According to Aliyu, DARES is currently the world’s largest publicly funded renewable energy access project and is expected to provide electricity to about 17.5 million Nigerians.
He said the initiative has attracted significant private-sector participation, enabling the agency to rapidly scale up renewable energy infrastructure across the country.
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“Today, for the first time in the country, we are deploying more than 1,000 mini-grids nationwide. These include isolated mini-grids, while we have also been aggressive in the deployment of interconnected mini-grids,” he said.
The REA boss revealed that the agency is also implementing 48 interconnected mini-grid projects in partnership with electricity distribution companies to improve power supply in underserved communities.
“We have been moving around the country conducting groundbreaking ceremonies and setting deployment targets of between six and eight months for all the interconnected mini-grids,” he added.
Aliyu said the agency has equally secured the support of financial institutions to expand investment in the renewable energy sector.
“We have convinced a number of Nigerian banks to support the sector, and we have signed several memoranda of understanding covering equipment financing, debt financing and bridge financing for private-sector operators,” he stated.
He further disclosed that REA recently completed Nigeria’s first nationwide electricity access mapping exercise, identifying more than 750,000 communities to guide future renewable energy interventions and improve planning for electricity expansion.
