The 2025 Budget, which is awaiting approval by the National Assembly, will allocate $ 100 billion to install solar mini-grids in various government buildings, federal universities, and their teaching facilities.
The Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Abba Aliyu, said once the budget is passed and signed into law by President Bola Tinubu, his agency would begin work to provide reliable, cost-effective and climate-friendly power supply in the government institutions.
Aliyu, who was a guest on Tuesday’s episode of The Morning Brief on Channels Television, explained that the funding is provided by the Federal Ministry of Power’s National Public Sector Solarization Initiative.
It’s “a new concept designed to reduce the cost of governance. N100bn has been allocated for it. We are going to use that funding to solarise the entire public institutions”, he said.
The current government, according to the REA boss, analyzed the money being spent by public institutions on diesel and generator sets. “To address that, that funding is being provided for us to solarise the institutions”, he said.
Students from the University of Ibadan and Power Minister Adebayo Adelabu joined forces to protest a 100-day power outage at the University College Hospital (UCH) on Monday, promising to restore electricity to the disgruntled students.
“In the next six months, I will tell you that I have started the process of deploying mini-grids in an additional five universities. I’ll let you know that I’ve completed at least two of the eight mini-grid deployments in each of the eight universities and one teaching hospital.
“I’ll also let you know that I’ve started solarizing the government.” In Abuja and elsewhere, we are looking at some significant government parastatals.
“We are looking at starting with five, and the UCH is one of them.” We’re considering launching at the University of Lagos. In Ibadan, the minister of power was. We want to do the University of Ibadan plus the teaching hospital, Obafemi Awolowo University, University of Nigeria, Nsukka,  , and Ahmadu Bello University”.
The REA boss said before the next six months, his agency would commission at least 60 mini-grids, and start the process of deploying 40 interconnect grids to create reliability.
Aliyu claimed that his organization has already carried out research in some of the nation’s top universities and teaching hospitals.
He continued, “We recently completed our intervention in seven universities and two teaching hospitals, where we gave them a hybrid mini-grid that would be cost-effective for 24 hours.”
For instance, we have 12 megawatts of capacity at the University of Maiduguri, which is capable of supporting the teaching hospital and the only water treatment facility in the city of Maiduguri. These are the types of interventions”,he said.
