Over 90m Nigerians lack access to electricity – report

The number of Nigerians without access to grid electricity has risen by 5.8 percent to 90 million at the end of 2021, according to a new report by intergovernmental group, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

IRENA, in its report: Renewable Energy Market Analysis – Africa and its Regions – indicates that Nigeria continues to suffer from access rates of 55 percent, most of which are found in the rural and semi-rural areas.

The Renewable Energy Association of Nigeria (REAN) had previously indicated that the number of Nigerians without access to grid electricity was 85 million, which accounted for 43 percent of the country’s rural population.

Its report titled: Exploring Sources of Funding for Off-Grid Rural Electrification, stressed Nigeria as the country with the largest energy access deficit in the world.

“The lack of reliable power is a significant constraint for citizens and businesses, resulting in an annual economic loss estimated at $26.2 billion.”

The report also states that the lack of rural electrification leads to increased rural poverty.

“Inadequate and/or unreliable power supply creates social challenges for rural residents, such as lack of access to farm irrigation, storage, and agro-processing, lack of potable water, lighting, poor access to functional healthcare services, better quality education delivery, lack of ICT-digital information enablement, and unemployment, among others.”

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In addition, Mele Kyari, the group managing director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), in the last Energy Sustainability Conference held in 2021, said the energy poverty level was devastating.

“Nigeria should ensure that the country’s energy is secured, sustainable, available, and accessible for its people,” he advised.

Meanwhile, the SDG7: Data and Projections report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that the number of Africans without electricity increased in 2021.

This trend suggests that the continent’s steady decline in the number of people without electricity, which began in 2013, has slowed.

According to the study, Africa will account for the majority of the global figure for lack of electricity access by 2030.

“Without additional policy action, around 670 million people would still be without access in 2030, almost all of them in Africa,” the report stated.

According to the Agency’s analysis, Africa’s experience contrasts sharply with that of other countries around the world, primarily in Asia, where grid connections and distributed electricity access solutions were aided by more concerted policies and easier financing.

These regions’ gains in electricity access slowed, but they were still more resilient than Africa’s gains in the face of the pandemic.

“As a result, over the past two years, sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the global population without access has grown from 74 percent in 2019 to almost 80 percent in 2021.”

In other words, four out of every five people in the world without access to electricity now live in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study.

However, approximately two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African countries have integrated off-grid systems into their framework for energy access support, and at least 11 countries in the region – including Nigeria, Tanzania, and Ethiopia – have extended affordability support to these customers prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.