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Rural Electrification Plan Was Delayed By Previous Administrations - Fashola

Mr. Raji Fashola, the minister of Power, Works, and Housing, has said the previous administration failed to implement a rural electrification policy it signed into law in 2005.

He spoke when he appeared as a guest on Big Talk, a programme on T.V Continental on April 18.

The minister said that although the plan was signed in 2005, nothing was done to implement it.

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He said, “That plan was signed in 2005 and it should have been in place in 2006. No such thing was done until 2016 when we developed that plan and Mr. President approved it.”

He explained what the plan is about. In his words, “The plan contains essentially three ankles. One is to use universities which starts in rural areas and almost all the universities that I know starts in rural areas. So, when you use a university where there is a large community anchoring, you can then use them to do the distribution to the villages around. That is the policy behind our intervention in rural areas. Universities are not our main purpose, they are the means to build a mini-grid to support rural communities.”

He said that the plan is to intervene in the 37 federal universities and seven teaching hospitals.

He also said the plan involves the use of small water bodies to generate electricity as the second angle of the rural electrification plan: “So, Oyan Dam and all those dam projects will be the anchors and again we have gotten the approval to commission five dams as a pilot.”

He identified the last angle of the plan as the completion of the rural electrification projects that were initiated since in 1999.

He revealed that there were 2,000 of such electricity-abandoned undertakings under constituency projects.

Fashola said the plan will help to take electricity to people who are not connected to the grid and to also manage those who have been on the grid.

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Energy