Nigeria’s rural electrification initiative will receive a fresh boost of N114.64 billion next year, according to the 2022 proposed budget.
Rural electrification got the highest appropriation for capital projects, accounting for 38.86 percent of the entire capital budget for the power ministry next year.
An analysis of the 2022 Appropriation Bill that was presented to the National Assembly showed that the government plans to spend N104.18 billion for capital projects under the Transmission Company of Nigeria.
The government also intends to spend N74.23 billion for projects to be handled by the headquarters of the Federal Ministry of Power.
Out of the total allocation of N301.26 billion for the Federal Ministry of Power in the 2022 budget, the sum of N4.87billion, N1.36billion and N294.99billion were appropriated for personnel, overhead and capital projects, respectively.
The Federal Government has been partnering with multilateral donor agencies to fund the electrification of rural communities across the country.
READ ALSO: Lagos Blue Rail Project Supported By CBN, Three Other Banks
It, for instance, announced in August that the World Bank and the African Development Bank were supporting off-grid power development projects in Nigeria with $500m.
The government, through its Rural Electrification Agency and the Nigeria Electrification Project, stated that the fund was being used in the implementation of the various power development programmes.
REA provides off-grid solutions to bridge electricity gap in unserved and underserved rural communities and healthcare centres in Nigeria, with financial support from the World Bank and AfDB.
NEP is a private sector driven project that provides grant subsidies under its solar hybrid mini-grids, standalone solar home systems and productive use appliance components to bridge the access to electrification gap.
“A total sum of $550million was provided by both the World Bank and African Development Bank as support for the implementation of the off-grid solution, projects with $213million for the mini-grid components of both the World Bank and AfDB,” the Communications Specialist, NEP, Ahmed Abubakar, had stated.
