By: The nation

The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has promised to make the areas where 86 million Nigerians live without electricity the renewable energy hub of West Africa.

REA’s Managing Director Abba Aliyu made the promise during the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the agency and 10 Renewable Energy Service Companies (RESCOs).

The agency boss noted while several people see the lack of access to electricity as a challenge, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has taken it as an opportunity for economic growth.

He said: “That clear mandate is nothing other than making Nigeria to be the renewable hub of West Africa. We have a total of about 86 million Nigerians without access to electricity.

“A number of people will see that as a challenge facing the country. But the present government, led by President Tinubu, wants to capitalise on this challenge to turn it into an opportunity.

“We want to leverage this 86 million Nigerians that do not have access to make Nigeria the renewable hub of West Africa.”

Throwing light on how to provide electricity for the 86 million people, Aliyu said there is the need for financing, implementation vehicles, operational framework and domestication of the value chain in Nigeria.

The REA managing director stressed the need for talent development in the renewable energy field.

According to him, the Tinubu administration is committed to financially empowering the development of renewable energy, having signed the largest public sector-funded renewable project in West Africa.

He said: “First, when it comes to financial, it is on record that this government has signed the biggest public sector-funded renewable project in the entire West Africa.”

Aliyu said the $750 million distributed access through the Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) project has already started.

The REA boss announced that the agency had started with the 14 interconnected mini-grids that would create reliability for the underserved and form the basis upon which the country would scale up its intervention.

In the bid to scale up the development of renewable energy in the country, he said the agency sought an amendment to the regulation that capped a mini-grid at one MW.

He said the REA got the approval to develop a mini-grid with over one MW capacity.

Aliyu said: “Most of us here know that the mini-grid regulation has a top of one megawatt. Right? But because we really want to scale up our intervention, we engaged a regulator, and it is on record we exchanged over eight letters back and forth with the regulator.

“At the end of the day, they gave us approval to implement a project that is above one megawatt.”

He revealed that REA is targeting to generate 14 interconnected mini-grids for the deployment of an unprecedented interconnected mini-grid of 21.5 MW.

He said to scale up the financial intervention of renewable energy development, besides the $750 million DARES project the agency already has, President Tinubu has approved a N100 billion funding for rural electrification agencies to implement the National Public Sector Solarisation Initiative.

He described it is a Federal Government initiative to reduce the cost of governance.