From Gombe to Kwara, the Rural Electrification Agency is betting that electricity matters most for what it powers once it arrives. Stakeholders say the model is promising, but the harder tests are reliability, coordination and sustainability.
For decades, Nigeria’s rural electrification story was told in a single unit: how many people were connected. Lately, a different measure has taken over. It asks what a farmer, a trader or a tricycle rider can do once the lights come on.
That shift is visible in Balanga, a farming community in Gombe State, where the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) recently commissioned a 1MW renewable energy mini-grid backed by 2.4MWh of battery storage. Alongside generation and storage, the agency deployed productive-use equipment: an electric groundnut oil processing plant, a modular electric rice mill, multi-flour grinding machines and electric tricycles.
The aim is to link reliable power directly to mobility, processing, enterprise and income. It reflects a wider change in how the Federal Government describes the purpose of rural electrification.
A pipeline that has kept moving
Balanga is the latest in a run of projects across the country. In June, the REA commissioned a 505kWp interconnected solar mini-grid in Epe, Lagos State, serving five communities. In July, the Federal Government broke ground on 39 mini-grids in Adamawa State with a combined capacity of nearly 27MW, including the 10MW Kofare, 2.6MW Saminaka and 890kW Mbamba projects. A 3.5MW intervention in Kebbi State was announced alongside them.
The agency also launched about 11.9MWp of renewable infrastructure in Rivers State and broke ground on the 1.5MW Pankshin mini-grid in Plateau State. In August, Yobe State saw the groundbreaking of roughly 13.92MWp of interconnected hybrid solar projects.
September brought completions: a 3MW solar-hybrid plant at Yakubu Gowon University, Abuja, and the 581kWp Oke-Oyi mini-grid in Kwara State. In October, the REA broke ground on a 17.7MW interconnected mini-grid in Ibadan, Oyo State, designed to improve supply to five communities and open up commercial and industrial activity.
The sequence matters to the agency’s argument. Projects are being planned, built and completed, and the finished ones are being turned into platforms for economic activity.
‘Megawatts that translate into markets’
The Minister of Power, Chief Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe, frames Balanga as a test of whether infrastructure improves livelihoods.
“We are not simply providing one megawatt of electricity; we are creating the energy platform upon which farmers can process more, businesses can grow, transportation can become cleaner and more affordable, and communities can build new economic opportunities,” he said.
The productive-use equipment, he added, is the point of the exercise. “Our objective is not megawatts for the sake of megawatts. Our objective is megawatts that translate into markets, productivity, jobs, and prosperity.”
The design logic is a value chain. The groundnut plant shifts activity from selling raw produce to local value addition. The rice mill brings processing closer to production centres, the grinders serve small businesses and households, and the electric tricycles extend the project into mobility while reducing dependence on conventional fuels.
Energy tied to local strengths
For Gombe’s government, the appeal is that the power is matched to what the community already does. Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya said the project works because it connects energy to the economic strengths of the 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,” he said.
He presented the project as the product of federal-state alignment. Gombe has already hosted a 1MW solar mini-grid at Talasse in Balanga, renewable infrastructure in Filiya and Shongom, and a hybrid intervention around Balanga Dam.
Reliability the new frontier
REA Managing Director Abba Abubakar Aliyu argues the sector is moving from counting connections to judging outcomes.
He said, “The next frontier is to ask a more fundamental question: what happens after the electricity arrives?”
He wants the programme judged on whether farmers process more of what they produce, whether young entrepreneurs start businesses, whether the cost of mobility falls, and whether women who once spent hours processing produce can raise their productivity and income.
Aliyu said Balanga’s 2.4MWh of storage reflects a growing emphasis on 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,” he said.
Storage also changes what a mini-grid can offer a business. At Oke-Oyi, in Ilorin East Local Government Area, extended battery capacity lets the mini-grid power the community through the night. The project, set to serve 1,800 businesses and households, was delivered under the Interconnected Mini-Grid Acceleration Scheme (IMAS) with support from the Nigerian Energy Support Programme (NESP). Backing came from the European Union, Germany through GIZ, and partners including UNICEF.
At the commissioning, Tegbe described IMAS as a model for international partnership.
He said it uses public funding to attract private developers, sets clear market rules and builds long-term commercial viability rather than dependence on perpetual subsidy. Aliyu said Oke-Oyi shows how interconnected mini-grids can combine distributed renewable energy with existing distribution networks.
He thanked the Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company and Nayo Tropical Technologies Limited for their roles.
Tegbe also urged residents to guard the assets against vandalism, calling the mini-grid an investment built for their benefit and for generations to come. Community ownership and maintenance, which the REA says it is prioritising, may decide how long such projects last.
The rural-urban drift
Kwara’s political leadership pointed to migration. Representing Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Danladi-Salihu, said his rural background made the project’s significance plain.
“As the Speaker of Kwara State House of Assembly and being from a rural area, we understand the importance of electricity in taming rural-urban migration,” he said.
The argument is that when rural businesses can power machinery and operate after dark, young people have more reason to stay. Whether that holds will show up in local enterprise data over several years, not at a commissioning ceremony.
Energy-policy advocate Dr Cheryl Ikejiaku, notes that interconnected mini-grids “allow for a scalable approach to electricity, where systems are built one step at a time to empower homes, medical farms, and small enterprises.” Experts further note that mini-grids have moved from pilot-stage curiosity to a proven, bankable pathway for closing the access gap.
Coordination: The less glamorous problem
If building mini-grids is one challenge, avoiding wasteful overlap is another.
At the relaunch of the Off-Grid Stakeholder Coordination and Partnership Forum in Abuja, the Federal Government announced an Off-Grid Coordination Secretariat to track commitments, manage risks and eliminate duplication across projects.
Tegbe, represented by his Chief of Staff, Doyin Adelabu, named fragmentation as a major hindrance.
“Fragmentation is the quiet tax every under-coordinated sector pays: in duplicated effort, missed investment opportunities, and slower delivery of power to the Nigerians who need it most,” he said.
The Secretariat will convene issue-based working groups and generate shared market intelligence. The minister urged development partners, financiers, private operators, state governments and civil society to nominate focal points and share data.
The REA MD said the platform is meant to ensure that “multiple programmes do not inadvertently target the same communities while other underserved areas remain unattended.”
Forum partners included NESP, UK PACT, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) and Murty International Ltd.
From connections to investable markets
Civil society voices at the forum offered a measured endorsement. Ikenna-Donald Ofoegbu of Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria urged stakeholders to look past connection numbers.
“For many years, we measured success largely by the number of mini-grids installed, solar home systems deployed, or connections delivered. These indicators remain important. But the next phase requires us to ask a more consequential question: What happens after the connection?,” he said.
He called for movement “from successful interventions to scale; from connections to productive use; from donor-supported projects to investable markets; and from individual programmes to a coordinated national ecosystem.”
His remarks expose a tension inside the programme. Donor money and public funds built much of the early infrastructure. The stated goal is a market sustained by private capital, which will demand commercial discipline on tariffs, maintenance and customer demand.
What the numbers say, and what they do not
Government data indicates that more than 7.5 million Nigerians have gained access through over 200 solar hybrid mini-grids and about 1.8 million solar home system connections. Under the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) programme, the government targets 17 million more.
DARES is meant to use public resources to unlock private capital and create a commercially sustainable distributed-energy market, opening opportunities for Renewable Energy Service Companies, manufacturers, financiers, technology firms and agricultural processors.
For households, the promised gains are longer supply hours and an end to long manual processing. For small businesses, they are reliable power for machines that would otherwise run on petrol or diesel, or not run at all. For the wider economy, the claim is a shift from selling raw produce toward local processing and the jobs attached to it.
The test ahead
The pipeline is the easy part to count. Several states have seen groundbreakings, and the 17.7MW Ibadan project is among the largest.
Whether the model delivers will turn on questions the commissioning speeches rarely answer. Will supply stay steady after the ribbon is cut? Can communities afford the tariffs? Are the milling and processing machines used, maintained and profitable? Will the coordination secretariat actually prevent overlap?
The REA says it is building toward those answers. “We are building electricity ecosystems, not simply installing power plants,” Aliyu said.
Whether the ecosystem takes root will be measured, as he put it, in what happens after the electricity arrives.