REA says it remains on course to delivering energy project

Despite several court cases confronting it, the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) said it remains on course to delivering its Energising Economies Programme and electricity to over 100 million Nigerians who are not connected to the grid.

The REA is an agency of the federal government established primarily to provide electricity to rural communities with a view to boosting the socio-economic lives of dwellers, as well as discouraging rural-urban migration occasioned by absence of basic activities. REA’s records show about 100 million Nigerians are not connected to the national grid and require intervention of the agency in off-grid solutions.

‎The Agency has faced various litigation concerns from some DisCos since the commencement of its Energizing Economies Programme in February.

‎”The Idea of the Energizing Economies Programme is providing power to the people that need it,” Suleiman Babamanu, senior technical project manager, Rural Electrification Agency told BusinessDay at the September NEXIER Power dialogue in Abuja. “The people that are taking us to court don’t even have the right in the first place, because the Nigerian government has not given any distribution network ‘exclusivity right’ unless you are able to provide 100 per cent power in that geographical location.”
He explained that The first phase of the project which commenced earlier in the year – the Energizing Education – focuses on providing ‎uninterrupted power supply for 37 federal universities and 7 university teaching hospitals in Nigeria through the utilization of off-grid captive power plants.

“We have also commenced the hospital project in the teaching hospitals which is part of the Energizing Education Projects” Babamanu disclosed. “They are part of our off-grid strategies and we are powering Federal Universities. We have already commenced the phase one.”

The Energizing Economies Programme is currently going on in nine federal universities teaching hospital across the federation.

Similarly, development finance Institutions such as the World Bank and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) have provided financial support to REA.

‎REA said an energy demand audit it conducted, indicates that four markets located in the southeast would need 36.37 Megawatts (MW) of stable electricity to boost their productivity. The REA Audit stated that collectively the 36.27 Megawatts would conveniently serve 50,900 shops that are in the four markets.

‎Industry watches say, government efforts to provide uninterrupted power supply for higher institutions and markets across the country must be supported to ensure growth of the industries across different regions of the country for wealth creation.