Federal Govt Tackles Waste In Off-grid Power Delivery, Sets Up Coordination Secretariat

The federal government has established an Off-Grid Coordination Secretariat to tackle waste in off-grid power delivery, by tracking commitments, managing risks and eliminating project duplication across the power sector.

The minister of Power Joseph Tegbe, made this known in Abuja at the official relaunch of the Off-Grid Stakeholder Coordination and Partnership Forum, organized by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA).

The forum involved the participation of key partners including Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit – Nigerian Energy Support Programme, UK Partnering for Accelerated Climate Transitions (UK PACT), SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, Global Off-Grid Lighting Association (GOGLA) and Murty International Ltd.

Tegbe represented by his chief of staff, Doyin Adelabu identified sector fragmentation as a major hindrance to rapid electrification.

“Fragmentation is the quiet tax every under-coordinated sector pays: in duplicated effort, missed investment opportunities, and slower delivery of power to the Nigerians who need it most,” he said.

The minister noted that the Off-Grid Coordination Secretariat will convene issue-based working groups and generate shared market intelligence.

He also urged development partners, financiers, private operators, state governments, and civil society organizations to nominate focal points, share data, and participate actively.

The minister further pledged that the ministry will continue providing policy direction through the National Electrification Strategy and Implementation Plan while supporting state electricity markets under the Electricity Act.

Also speaking at the forum, the REA managing director, Abba Aliyu highlighted the need for a centralised platform to help the industry identify existing projects and allocate resources efficiently.

“As Nigeria’s off-grid energy sector continues to expand in scale, investment, and institutional participation, there is an increasing need to establish an Off-Grid Sector Coordination Secretariat that will provide a structured platform for alignment across government institutions, development partners, private-sector operators, and other stakeholders,” he said.

The REA MD explained that the Secretariat will strengthen coordination across the entire project lifecycle, from planning and project development to financing and implementation by promoting information sharing, harmonizing interventions, and aligning investments with national and subnational electrification priorities.

“This will help eliminate duplication of efforts, reduce institutional and operational inefficiencies, improve the allocation of scarce resources, and ensure that multiple programs do not inadvertently target the same communities while other underserved areas remain unattended.”

“More importantly, the Secretariat will provide a common coordination framework through which projects, financing, technical assistance, and policy interventions can be strategically sequenced and deployed, thereby improving delivery efficiency, strengthening accountability, and maximizing the collective impact of public, private, and development-partner investments in Nigeria’s off-grid electricity sector,” he added.

In his remarks, the representative of Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, Ikenna-Donald Ofoegbu, urged stakeholders to look beyond mere connection numbers when measuring success.

Ofoegbu said, “For many years, we measured success largely by the number of mini-grids installed, solar home systems deployed, or connections delivered. These indicators remain important. But the next phase requires us to ask a more consequential question: What happens after the connection?”

He advocated for a strategic shift “from successful interventions to scale; from connections to productive use; from donor-supported projects to investable markets; and from individual programmes to a coordinated national ecosystem.”

The Off-Grid Stakeholder Coordination and Partnership Forum originally began as a donor roundtable in April 2017. Government data indicates that over 7.5 million Nigerians have gained electricity access via more than 200 solar hybrid mini-grids and approximately 1.8 million solar home system connections with the Government targeting 17 million more Nigerians under the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-Up (DARES) programme.