*** Abaribe demands ownership, maintenance

*** Varsity Vice-Chancellor pledges maintenance

*** EEP has delivered over 100MW to 22 varsities – REA

The Federal Government on weekend, given the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) a six-month deadline to extend reliable, round-the-clock electricity from the newly commissioned 3MW solar hybrid power plant to all parts of Yakubu Gowon University, formerly the University of Abuja.

It noted that 140 female STEM students across the seven beneficiary institutions have been trained in renewable-energy technologies under the programme.

Minister of Power, Chief Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this in Abuja, during the commissioning of the 3MW Solar Hybrid Power Project, developed under the Federal Government’s Energising Education Programme (EEP) Phase II at Yakubu Gowon University

The directive is expected to expand the benefits of the project beyond its current coverage to critical areas of the university, including hostels and other facilities that require uninterrupted electricity for academic, research and administrative activities.

Tegbe said the government would examine the expansion of the battery-storage system to enable the facility to serve additional parts of the university, particularly hostels and other areas raised by the Students’ Union Government.

He said: “We currently have three megawatts of solar-panel capacity and three megawatts of battery capacity. Typically, on this kind of project, what you can do is double the battery capacity so that your storage capacity is much higher, and then you can serve other areas.

“The Vice-Chancellor has come to see me on this, and we are looking into it. REA will make sure that, in the next six months, every other area is covered.”

The REA lists the Yakubu Gowon University plant at 3MW, while the project’s technical procurement document specifies an installed configuration of 3.0MW solar photovoltaic capacity, 2.0MWh battery energy storage and 2.6MW diesel generation capacity.

The intervention comes against the backdrop of persistent electricity challenges in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions, where unreliable grid supply and dependence on diesel generators have increased the cost of running laboratories, lecture facilities, ICT infrastructure and other essential services.

The World Bank has previously identified unreliable electricity and dependence on expensive diesel generation as major constraints affecting federal universities and teaching hospitals.

For Yakubu Gowon University, the new facility is therefore expected to provide a more dependable electricity source for lecture halls, laboratories, ICT systems, administrative facilities, campus lighting and other critical operations.

He added, “A university such as ours cannot teach effectively, conduct research meaningfully, operate its laboratories, sustain digital services or provide the conducive environment required for learning and innovation without dependable power supply.

“Over the years, Energising Education has also taught us something else. When you build infrastructure at this scale, you have to think beyond the day it is commissioned.

“You have to think about what happens five years from now, 10 years from now. You have to ask whether the equipment is being properly maintained, whether performance is being monitored, whether there is a sustainable operating model and whether the investment made by the government today will continue to create value into the future.”

In his remarks, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of REA, Abba Abubakar Aliyu, described the Yakubu Gowon University project as another milestone in the EEP.

Aliyu said earlier phases of the programme had delivered more than 100MW of clean energy infrastructure to 22 federal universities and three affiliated teaching hospitals.

He said the wider intervention was impacting more than 300,000 students and 50,000 academic and administrative staff.

The REA boss said the Yakubu Gowon University facility would support lecture halls, laboratories, ICT systems, administrative facilities, campus lighting and other essential services.

He, however, warned that the success of renewable-energy investments should not be measured only by the amount of power generated, but by the ability to keep the assets functional for years after commissioning.

According to him, the government must now focus as much on maintaining existing renewable-energy infrastructure as it does on constructing new projects.

Aliyu used the occasion to highlight the Federal Government’s Renewable Asset Management Company (RAMCO), established in partnership with the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI) and the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria (InfraCorp).

He said the initiative was designed to address the long-term management, maintenance and optimisation of renewable-energy assets.

Aliyu said: “We have become very good at asking, ‘How do we build more?’ We must now become equally rigorous about asking: How do we protect what we have already built? How do we make it perform? And how do we preserve its value?”

He challenged the university to go beyond consuming electricity from the facility and turn the project into a research platform.

He listed renewable energy, battery storage, grid integration, energy management, smart metering, cybersecurity, tariff design, asset maintenance, climate resilience and energy security among areas in which the university could expand research and training.

Also speaking at the event, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Power, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, warned that poor maintenance and vandalism could undermine investments in renewable-energy infrastructure.

Abaribe said some solar installations deployed in the past three or four years were already failing, stressing that maintenance must be treated as a central component of public infrastructure delivery.

He urged the university community to take ownership of the new project rather than treating it as government property.

He said: “Let the university community own it, so that you can be sure that you do not continue to wait for government officials to come and fix it whenever there is a problem.”

He also cited cases of transformers being vandalised because communities regarded them as Federal Government property.

Abaribe said the new solar facility should substantially reduce the university’s dependence on diesel and enable it to achieve more reliable electricity supply.

The Vice-Chancellor of Yakubu Gowon University, Prof. Hakeem Babatunde Fawehinmi, said the university would take responsibility for ensuring that the investment was properly utilised and maintained.

Fawehinmi thanked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Federal Government, REA, the World Bank, the Nigeria Electrification Project team, the EPC contractor and other partners for the intervention.

He said the project represented an investment not only in electricity infrastructure but also in the university’s academic mission.

He expressed the hope that the intervention would improve the institution’s immediate power situation while creating a culture of innovation and responsible energy use.

The Yakubu Gowon University project is part of EEP Phase II, which the REA says covers seven federal universities and two affiliated teaching hospitals across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.

The seven university beneficiaries are Yakubu Gowon University; Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta; Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike; University of Calabar; University of Maiduguri; Federal University Gashua; and the Nigerian Defence Academy.

For Yakubu Gowon University, the six-month directive now places the focus on the next stage of the intervention: extending the benefits of the 3MW solar hybrid system across the institution while ensuring that the infrastructure remains functional and sustainable over the long term.