Minister Urges Agencies To Boost Power Supply Services, Rural Electrification Access
The Minister of State for Power, Mr Goddy Jedy-Agba has charged three agencies in the power sector to increase their service delivery towards providing improved power supply.
The minister said this when he briefed the press at his office in Abuja. “Businesses will grow up if they have light. So we need to step up our game and the essence of this interaction is for the media to assess whether we are succeeding at that.
“I feel that we should give those people (in rural areas) more than we give attention to ourselves in the city because you grow from down to up, and if we grow them, we will grow our nation.”
In his presentation, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), Engr. Peter Ewesor, said the agency has inspected 5,652 power installations nationwide and that over 65 percent have been certified fit for supplying electricity.
The Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad, said with a $350 million fund from World Bank and another $200 million fund from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the agency was financing solar mini grid projects across off-grid rural communities to provide more access to electricity.
He said as at 2019, REA has connected 103,500 households through the World Bank project.
Director General of the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria (NAPTIN), Ahmed Nagode who was also at the briefing said the institute has trained 16,000 technical personnel in the power sector. He gave a breakdown of this to include 8,500 existing staff of power firms and over 7,000 others were fresh graduates and artisans that have been trained.
