The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) says it has signed 267 grant agreements worth $395m to boost the electricity supply in Nigeria under the Nigeria electrification projects (NEPs). Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad, the managing director of REA, stated this on Monday in Abuja.

Additionally, he claimed that five million underserved Nigerians now have access to power thanks to a financing facility from the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) totaling $350m and $200m, respectively.

However, approximately $64.8m of the obligations, had already been paid out to private sector partners for the project’s execution.

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The project to boost the electricity supply in Nigeria is set to power 400 primary healthcare centers with clean electricity

The project, according to Ahmad, is anticipated to provide off-grid dependable, and clean electricity supply to 705,000 households, 90,000 micro, small, and medium-sized businesses, 100 isolation and treatment centers, and 400 primary healthcare centers in underserved and unserved regions of the nation.

He added that the agreements made with private developers had resulted in over one million connections across the nation.

He said, “The REA’s mission is to boost electricity supply in Nigeria to underserved and unserved people. The method used to do this depends on the funding source. The objectives outlined in the plan for rural electrification include reaching Nigerians everywhere in the country. With 80 million being the current population projection.”

But according to the managing director, this would require a sizable amount of funding.

He said, “We frequently delay implementing projects until the government has funding from the budget. You won’t be able to achieve those goals if you continue doing this for the next 100 years. Therefore, it was crucial for the agency to make sure that its mandate did indeed cease with implementation.”

Ahmad further added that thanks to the rural electrification fund (REF), a project sponsored by the private sector, REA was in a position to secure funding from a variety of sources in order to fulfill its mandate.