Rural Electrification Agency Seeks Collaboration With States

Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has called for a working partnership with state governments to fulfill its mandate of providing electricity to Nigerians in unreached communities in the rural areas.

 The call was made by the leader of the REA board/management projects monitoring team for the South East region, Hon Chidi Nwogu, during a visit to Enugu State governor Peter Mbah.

 Nwogu said this had become necessary to create effective synergies and avoid duplication of efforts.

The team was in Enugu to inspect various rural electrification projects in the state including two 50 kilowatts mini-grid hybrid power plants located each at the Park Lane Teaching Hospital and Colliery Hospital both in Enugu.

Nwogu told the governor that the mini-grid power plants were initiated as special health intervention to support the COVID-19 vaccination campaign aimed at ensuring uninterrupted power supply for centres housing the COVID-19 vaccines.

In his response, Governor Mbah assured the REA team of his government’s willingness to partner with the agency to reach more rural areas in the state, especially areas yet to be served by the public power supply.

The governor asked the team to work directly with his office in identifying areas that the agency and state government can work together to address the problematic issue of power generation and distribution particularly in the area of its mandate.

The REA team comprising the agency’s executive director, corporate services, Mr Olaniyi Netufo and South East zonal coordinator, Mr Patrick Uba, also visited Ebonyi State where it inspected another completed 50 kilowatts mini-grid plant located at the College of Medicine, Uburu.