…delivers over 5,000 electricity connection across Nigeria in 2023
The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has said that of the N3 billion worth of projects implemented in 2023, only N900 million was released for the funding, creating a total of N2.1 billion funding gap to complete its projects.
Umar Abdullahi Umar, the executive director, technical service, at the REA disclosed this in Abuja on Monday, during the presentation of the REA 2023 capital project implementation.
According to him, drawing from the Agency’s approach to project delivery, the delivery of the National Poverty Reduction and Growth Strategy (NPRGS) and the traditional objectives of the Agency’s Capital
Projects, the REA has optimized the deployment of multiple technologies, including Solar Mini grids, Solar Water Pumps (irrigation farming), Solar Home Systems (Low-Capacity Productive Use) and Solar Street Lights across the six geopolitical zones of the country.
“And for 2024, our budget has been scaled up by about four times what it was in 2023. So, you know, there’s good news. If we’re impacting, electrifying 1.4 million Nigerians, you can imagine we are doing times four of that for 2024.
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“Also, there’s a question regarding the measure set for funding to complete outstanding projects and how much it is. It’s about total funding for the national poverty reduction scheme is about N3 billion and about N900 million-plus has been released, the amount pending is about N2.1 billion.
“So there’s collaboration and understanding between us and the mother agency that will provide the funding.”
He explained that the Agency has reinforced its approach to monitoring and evaluation, an ongoing process which he said will be sustained till the full delivery of over 447 projects in the year under review.
“Internally we are deploying a lot of IT infrastructures within the agency to help us in remote tracking of the implementation. This is something also that we will start in 2024 budget cycle,” he said.
In his remarks, Abba Abubakar Aliyu, the Managing Director of REA, noted different sources of funding for the Agency, stating that federal government alone cannot address the energy gap. He explained that the agency was about to complete the $550 million Nigeria Electrification project, adding that Agency has recently secured an additional $750 million from the World Bank for ‘Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up project’.
The project, according to him is the biggest public sector funded off grid project, targeting the electrification of17.5 million Nigerians out of the 85 million that do not have access to electricity. “And we are very clear how we intend to do that. 30 million Nigerians will be electrified using the isolated mini-grids, 1.5 million Nigerians with interconnected mini-grids, and about 12.5 million Nigerians with both mesh grid and solar home systems.”
According to Aliyu, the $750 million World Bank fund for the implementation of the distributed asset through renewable energy scale up project is expected to crystallize $1.1 billion private sector investment.
“We do not really rely on just the federal government budgeting. We know the federal government alone cannot address the energy gap. And that is why we are innovative in sourcing different sources of funding. I mentioned the yearly budget cycle, the bilateral agreement we get from the World Bank and African Development Bank. I am happy to say that the $750 million World Bank funding for the implementation of the distributed asset through renewable energy scale is the biggest off-grid funding project in the world.
“So because we use the $750 million as a capital subsidy, we expect the private sector to bring their own funding for them to qualify to get this capital subsidy. So the $750 million capital subsidy would crystallize $1.1 billion private sector funding, which means that we have close to $1.8 billion to implement to make sure that we address this.
“The present government has been very ambitious and adventurous in making sure that this number of Nigerians without access is really addressed in a very short period of time.”
