The Minister of Power, Mr Joseph Tegbe, has disclosed that the commissioning of a 3MW captive solar hybrid power project at Yakubu Gowon University, Abuja, would strengthen electricity supply for teaching, research, laboratory operations, digital services and other critical activities at the institution.
According to him, the project is expected to provide a more reliable energy base for the university, which has almost 40,000 students, including more than 8,000 residents on campus, as well as over 3,500 staff.
The facility, which was commissioned on Wednesday under Phase II of the Energising Education Programme (EEP), was implemented by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) through the World Bank-funded Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP).
Speaking, the Minister said the investment demonstrated the practical link between Nigeria’s energy transition and human capital development.
“There is perhaps no better place to demonstrate the practical value of Nigeria’s energy transition than a university,” Tegbe said.
According to him, universities bring together several areas that depend on reliable electricity, including learning, research, healthcare, technology, administration and digital infrastructure.
He said the new facility would provide a more dependable energy base for teaching and research, stressing, however, that its long-term performance would determine the true value of the investment.
“The commissioning is not the conclusion of the investment. It is the beginning of its most important phase,” the minister said.
Tegbe linked the sustainability of renewable energy projects to the recently established Renewable Asset Management Company (RAMCO), which is designed to strengthen the long-term management and performance of renewable energy assets.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of REA, Mr Abba Aliyu, said the EEP had evolved beyond the provision of electricity infrastructure to demonstrate how energy investment could support education and human capital development.
“When the Energising Education Programme was conceived, the ambition was straightforward: to change what reliable electricity could mean for Nigeria’s public universities,” Aliyu said.
He said the objective was not merely to install solar panels on campuses, but to create conditions that would enable students to learn, lecturers to teach, researchers to work, laboratories to function and universities to operate with greater certainty.
Aliyu said the programme had so far delivered renewable energy infrastructure to 22 federal universities and three affiliated teaching hospitals, deploying more than 100MW of clean energy and impacting over 600,000 students and 50,000 academic and administrative staff nationwide.
Aliyu said REA’s experience with projects of such scale had underscored the need to plan for the entire life cycle of energy assets, from construction and commissioning to operation, maintenance and long-term performance.
“We have become very good at asking, ‘How do we build more?’ We must now become equally rigorous about asking, ‘How do we protect what we have already built? How do we make it perform? And how do we preserve its value?’” he said.
He said the experience had contributed to the thinking behind RAMCO and would continue to guide REA’s efforts to attract private capital, expand electricity access and protect public investment.
The Head of the Nigeria Electrification Project, Mr Olufemi Akinyelure, said the project’s significance should be measured by the development opportunities that reliable electricity would create.
“Government may not be in the business of making profit, but it must always be in the business of making progress,” Akinyelure said.
He added that powering a university went beyond lighting buildings, as it helped to support innovation, learning and the development of human capital.
The Vice-Chancellor of Yakubu Gowon University, Prof. Hakeem Babatunde Fawehinmi, described the project as an important investment in the university’s academic mission.
