By; Sunday Ode, Abuja.
The Federal Government has flagged-off the distribution of 20,000 solar powered lighting system in rural communities in the country.
Acting President,Yemi Osinbajo flagged off the programme, on Tuesday, at Wurna village, a rural community in Gwagwalada, Abuja with the distribution of 200 units to the villagers in the first phase.
Speaking at the launch, Osinbajo noted that despite the importance of power to national development, it was not feasible for every Nigerian to tap from the national grid.
An estimated 70million households in Nigerian are yet to be connected to the national grid.
The VP said this realization,compelled government to start searching for alternative means of providing power to less fortunate Nigerians,especially at the grassroot, hence the solar powered systems.
The Acting President also disclosed that a total of 20,000 solar system would be distributed in homes across rural communities in the course of the year.
The project is in conjunction with the Niger Delta Power Holding Company(NDPHC) and Azuri technologies.
It has the capacity to provide energy to power at least 4 Led light bulbs,mobile phones,radio, irrigation facilities,bore-hole system,among others.
Osinbajo said: “In September 2015 President, Muhammadu Buhari spoke to me about what we could do to very quickly accelerate electrification especially in the rural areas.
“We had in mind different manner of projects that we could do to bring electricity to many of our rural communities and villages. He was particularly concerned as we spoke about farming and also education in the rural areas.
“How would we be able to get maximum irrigation facilities, maximum facilities for education. How do we maximise these things if we can’t get power to those areas. Water pumps, irrigation equipment among others.
“Renewable energy, especially solar power seemed to be the one that will be cost effective and that we could deploy very quickly all over the country.
“Once we took that decision we came across Azuri. We expect that this will be replicated all over Nigeria.
“We are starting with 20,000 but I am sure that we’ll add up very quickly. We’ve been talking to the private sector, involving themselves also in this project. We think that as solar power becomes cheaper, it is becoming cheaper day by day we’ll be able to afford to do even more and deploy more across the country, especially to those places that are not at the moment being served by our grid.
“The grid is one transmission centre but we cannot take all our power from the grid. So, in the next few years it will not be extremely important to be connected with the grid because we’ll be deploying every kind of solution”.
