The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO) of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Abba Aliyu, has said that about 80 million Nigerians have access to electricity, a situation that calls for more penetration of power to the rural areas.

Speaking when the delegation from Zanzibar Utilities Regulatory Authority (ZURA) paid him a visit on an exchange of knowledge on system dispatch and grid stability, he said Nigeria was not doing badly considering the huge population.

In a statement in Abuja, Aliyu stressed the importance of electricity to nation’s development, saying that electrification is everything.

“Electricity will determine how health services are to be done, how education is to be done, how agriculture is to be done, how everything is to be. And that’s the reason why we call it the electrification of everything,” he said.

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“There is a high rate of electricity demands across the world, REA said. “There are three issues that necessitate the current high demand for electricity which include the electrification of everything, population growth, AI and data centres,” REA said.

These three reasons are changing electricity demand. And the whole world, whether we are ready in Africa or we are not, electricity is going to change every single thing that we are going to do” he emohasised.

Aliyu said with the increasing use of AI around the world, the demand for electricity will continue to grow.

“And already the European Union (EU) has approved $150 billion for net zero manufacturing, just electricity, renewable and infrastructure.

Director, Stakeholders Management, Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), Dr. Maryam Yaya Abubakar, assured in her remarks that “Nigeria can build a mini-grid of up to 10 megawatts interconnected and five megawatts isolated.”

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