Some rural areas pay higher electricity tariff than Band A customers, says REA MD

Abba Aliyu, managing director of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), says many rural areas pay a higher electricity tariff than customers in Band A.

Aliyu spoke on Monday during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief programme.

He said the tariff in the communities sometimes ranges between N250 and N280 per unit.

The agency, with an objective to increase the contribution of renewable energy to Nigeria’s energy mix, has been building mini-grids in communities with potential for “productive use”.

Aliyu said rural communities across Nigeria now enjoy a stable electricity supply through completed mini-grid projects.

“There are communities — rural of the rurals — that pay tariff much more than what you are even paying in band A and they are paying. The tariff is even close to N250 to N280 per kilowatt hour,” he said.

“They use tokens, their mobile phones to pay for the electricity and enjoy it but there are other areas that the tariff is less than what you pay in band A.”

Aliyu said the cost of electricity is subjective and depends on the total cost of infrastructure that is deployed within communities.

“The most economically viable model now is the solar that we have seen. There are others that we are still discussing: wind, biomass,” he said.

“We try biomass but when we see the cost of logistic for moving the garbage from where they are being dumped to the processing zone and processing it, the tariff was way above the limit that we can allow and that is why we are yet to incentivise it.

“But for the wind, we are discussing with the Nigerian Wind Energy Council for us to start looking at small wind infrastructure that are economically viable that the tariff will be within the allowable range.”

Aliyu said if the agency gets such infrastructure, it would begin to deploy other means of electricity generation.