Dare Babalola
Abba Aliyu, the MD/CEO of the Rural Electricity Agency has disclosed that some rural communities pay more electricity tariffs than Band A users.
Aliyu made this known during an interview on Channels Television on Monday, where he also acknowledged that some of these communities pay lesser than Band A customers.
He said, “There are communities in rural areas that pay tariffs much more than what you pay in Band A. In some areas, the tariff is close to 250 or 280, and they load tokens using their mobile phones to pay for electricity. They enjoy it. However, there are areas where the tariff is less than what you pay in Band A. The tariff is subjective and depends on the total cost of infrastructure deployed in those communities.
“As for the most economically viable model, solar is currently the most viable option. We’re still discussing other options like wind and biomass. We tried biomass, but the cost of logistics for moving garbage from dump sites to processing zones and processing it made the tariff too high. We’re yet to incentivize biomass due to this.
“However, we’re exploring wind energy and recently signed an MOU with the Nigeria Wind Energy Council to look into small wind infrastructure that are economically viable with tariffs within the allowable range. If successful, we’ll start deploying other means of generation.”
Aliyu also disclosed that the agency has designed a program that will provide electricity to 17.5 million Nigerians through the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale (DARES) project, “which is the biggest project of its kind in the world”.
