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The Federal Government has commissioned a 1 megawatt solar mini-grid project equipped with a 2.4 megawatt battery energy storage system in the Tallasse community of Balanga Local Government Area, Gombe State.
The commissioning event, held on Saturday also marked the official groundbreaking for four additional interconnected mini-grid projects with a combined capacity of 16 megawatts across Dukku, Bajoga, Kumo, and Kaltungo communities in Gombe state.
The commissioning however goes deliberately beyond electricity. Alongside the new generation and storage infrastructure, the commissioning also features the deployment and launch of productive-use equipment, including electric tricycles, an electric groundnut oil processing plant, a modular electric rice mill and multi-flour electric grinding machines connecting reliable electricity directly to mobility, agriculture, processing, enterprise and income generation.
This comes on the heels of the recent ground-breaking of a 17.7MW interconnected mini-grid projects in Iwo, Ibadan, Oyo State on Wednesday.
Speaking at the commissioning, the Governor of Gombe State, Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya described the commissioning as another important outcome of the strategic partnership between the Gombe State Government and the Federal Government through REA.
“For us in Gombe State, this project is significant because it connects energy directly to the economic strengths of our people. Balanga is an agricultural community. When reliable electricity is combined with rice milling, groundnut processing, flour production and electric mobility, we are not merely lighting homes, we are strengthening an entire local economy.”
“Our partnership with the Rural Electrification Agency demonstrates what can be achieved when Federal and State Governments align around a common development objective. We deeply appreciate His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Honourable Minister of Power and the leadership of REA for translating policy into infrastructure that our people can see, use and benefit from. This is Renewed Hope made tangible at the community level,” the Governor said.
In his renarks, the Honourable Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe emphasized that the projects reflect the practical realization of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, which seeks to decouple a citizen’s access to opportunity from geography.
“From Kwara State and the Federal Capital Territory to last Wednesday’s event in Oyo State, and now here in Gombe, renewable power is spreading across Nigeria with unmistakable momentum.”
“This is the practical expression of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda: taking investment to communities and expanding the foundations of shared prosperity,” Tegbe stated.
The Minister noted that the true value of the infrastructure extends beyond basic household lighting, aiming directly at rural economic empowerment.
“The true significance of these investments will be measured in the daily lives they improve: the farmer who can process produce closer to home, the trader who can preserve perishable goods, the artisan who can power equipment, and the young person who can build a livelihood within the community,” Tegbe added.
Also speaking, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Abba Aliyu revealed that the 1MW project directly serves 6,028 connections, encompassing 5,929 residential units, 84 commercial connections and 15 dedicated nodes for productive economic activities.
He noted that Balanga represents the direction in which REA is taking rural electrification nationally away from counting connections alone towards measuring the economic outcomes created by electricity.
“For many years, the conversation around electricity access has understandably focused on how many people we connect and how many megawatts we deploy. Those numbers remain important. But the next frontier is to ask a more fundamental question: what happens after the electricity arrives?”
“Does the farmer process more of what he produces? Does a young entrepreneur establish a new business? Does the cost of mobility reduce? Can a woman who previously spent hours processing agricultural produce increase her productivity and income? Can businesses operate longer and employ more people? Those are the outcomes that ultimately define successful electrification,” Aliyu said.
He added that the inclusion of 2.4MWh of battery energy storage also demonstrates REA’s growing emphasis on reliability and quality of supply.
“Access without reliability limits economic impact. This is why we are increasingly integrating storage, intelligent monitoring, productive-use equipment and sustainable operating models into our interventions. We are building electricity ecosystems, not simply installing power plants,” he said.
The Balanga commissioning comes at a time when the Federal Government is scaling distributed renewable energy as a complementary pillar of Nigeria’s broader power-sector transformation. Through the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up programme and complementary REA interventions, the Federal Government is also increasingly using public resources to unlock private capital and create a commercially sustainable distributed-energy market.
Rather than relying on a single pathway to address the country’s electricity challenge, the Government is pursuing multiple solutions simultaneous strengthening conventional grid infrastructure while accelerating interconnected mini-grids, isolated mini-grids, embedded generation, solar home systems and dedicated renewable-energy solutions for universities, agricultural clusters, markets and productive communities.
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