FG to provide Solar units to 5 Million Households

The Federal Government reiterated its commitment to making Electricity available to 25 million people in rural or under-served areas. According to the Vice President, the Federal Government hopes to achieve the feat by providing modular solar-powered units to about 5 million households. Vice President, Prof. Osinbajo stated this in Abuja on Tuesday at a Webinar organised by the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, CWEIC.

Prof. Osinbajo said: “We also have a Solar Homes Systems Programme where we intend to engage private solar power companies who will be able to access cheap loans to provide modular solar-powered units to about 5 million households which will roughly translate to serve 25 million people in rural or under-served areas. At the moment, we have about 40million homes without power. So, we expect that this will be a major dent in that deficit.”

Speaking further, Osinbajo said the Government is doing much to ensure that the Nation beats the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. The VP said: “Jobs for Food which is an agricultural programme aimed at expanding the acreage under cultivation across the country, to create, we hope, hundreds of thousands of jobs and we also intend to guarantee uptake processors, aggregators and to some extent, by government.

“We also have a Jobs through Homes programme which is a programme to provide jobs and increase our national housing stock, at the same time by a massive social housing programme where we intend to engage young professionals and artisans who are involved at the moment, in small businesses, building and using local products such as cements, doors, tiles, windows and paint.”