Tinubu Approves $750 Million For Rural Electrification

President Bola Tinubu has approved a $750m World Bank funding for the construction of 1,200 mini-grids in rural communities across the nation.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Abba Aliyu, made this known on Tuesday while addressing newsmen at a forum held in Lagos.

Aliyu disclosed that President Tinubu approved the fund for the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up project, which is aimed at providing energy access to Nigerians in rural communities.

He noted that about 19 million of the 85 million Nigerians without access to energy would be provided electricity under the scheme.

While noting that Nigeria has the highest electricity gap in the world, Aliyu stated that the Federal Government was doing a lot to bridge the gap.

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 unelectrified Nigerians,

He sai, “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 $750m project where REA will use that funding as a capital subsidy to incentivise the private sector to electrify 23 per cent of the total unelectrified 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 interconnected mini-grids and 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.”

Aliyu added that the government is currently implementing one phase of the Nigeria Electrification Project, a $550m project funded by the World Bank and the African Development Bank.