Federal Government has approved a $750 million World Bank funding for the construction of 1,200 mini-grids in rural communities across Nigeria.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Abba Aliyu, disclosed this at the Alliance for Rural Electrification Energy Access Forum, in Lagos, yesterday.
He said President Bola Tinubu approved the fund for the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up project (DARES), aimed at providing energy access to Nigerians in rural communities.
Aliyu added that about 19 million of the 85 million Nigerians without access to energy would be provided electricity under the scheme.
The REA boss explained that the fund would be used as a capital subsidy to incentivise the private sector to electrify 23 per cent of the total un-electrified Nigerians,
“The Federal Government, under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, approved the biggest public sector-funded off-grid project across the entire world. It is a $750 million project where REA will use that funding as a capital subsidy to incentivise the private sector to electrify 23 per cent of the total un-electrified Nigerians and we are very clear about how we want to achieve that.
“We want to provide three million Nigerians with electricity access using isolated mini-grids; 1.5 million Nigerians with electricity through inter-connected mini-grids, and also about 15.5 million Nigerians with solar system mesh-grids. We also intend to use that funding to capitalise private sector funding to provide over 40,000 farmers with productive use of equipment to enhance their productivity,” he said.
He added that the Federal Government is currently implementing one phase of the Nigeria Electrification Project, a $550 million project funded by the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
The Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, said one of the critical mandates of the power ministry is how to bring energy access to everyone in Nigeria.
Adelabu, who was represented by his Technical Advisor, Adedayo Awoniyi, explained that the ministry had realised that it would be impossible to achieve this through the national grid, saying off-grid is essential in accelerating access to energy.
Earlier, the Chief Executive Officer of Alliance for Rural Electrification, David Lecoque, said the conference was to “capitalise investments and partnerships with the Nigerian government and other international partners” in the renewable energy sector.
