Nigeria to Establish Renewable Asset Management Company

Speaking on Monday, the Managing Director of REA, Mr Abba Aliyu, said the move is to sustain its electrification interventions and ensure long-term infrastructure viability.

Electricity challenges have made it difficult to distribute electricity to rural areas. With an installed capacity of 12,000 megawatts, the country has struggled to keep output at half of that with a peak of around 6,000 megawatts on record. To tackle this, the country has explored alternative energy sources like renewables.

According to Mr Aliyu, the new asset management company is expected to oversee and maintain assets that include the renewable energy infrastructure worth nearly $500 million, already deployed to universities across Nigeria.

“This company will warehouse these assets and REA will leverage on the assets to raise close to N1 trillion, so that we will continue to intervene even if there is no availability of loans and grants. The country will be standing on its own to continue to drive electricity access and infrastructure in many years to come,” Mr Aliyu stated, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He emphasised that the initiative will enable Nigeria to independently drive electricity access and infrastructure development for years to come.

According to him, REA is committed to ensuring that the company becomes operational before the end of the year.

He also revealed that President Bola Tinubu has approved N100 billion for REA to implement the National Public Sector Solarisation Project, a strategic initiative aimed at reducing the cost of governance by transitioning public institutions to solar energy.

“The analysis that we have seen of budget implementation shows that a number of public institutions spend a lot of money to buy diesel or to pay for electricity. To reduce the cost of governance, REA secured the project, which will start in the next few weeks,” he said.

Mr Aliyu also confirmed that discussions were ongoing with the Japanese International Development Corporation to secure an additional $200 million in co-financing have reached an advanced stage.

The fund will be merged with the existing $750 million Distributed Access through Renewable Energy (DARE) funding, bringing the total available financing to $950 million.

“Three weeks ago, we were in Japan with the Minister of Power, Mr Adebayo Adelabu. The discussions are almost concluded, and we expect the funds to be available soon,” he noted.

REA formalized agreements with eight Renewable Energy Service Companies (RESCOs) to accelerate Nigeria’s renewable energy expansion.

The companies include: Ashipa Electric Limited, De-Janees Concept Limited, Fax Power Limited, M&BH Power Limited, Okra Solar PTY Limited, Oando Clean Energy, Sosai Renewable Energy Limited, and Weight Nigeria Limited.

Mr Aliyu reiterated that these partnerships align with REA’s goal of increasing access to clean and sustainable electricity for Nigerian homes and businesses.