Four years after Nigeria switched on a solar-hybrid plant at Alex Ekwueme Federal University in Ndufu-Alike, the numbers behind it read less like an infrastructure case study and more like a balance sheet.
Roughly 9,500 staff and students draw power from the site. Diesel and grid-bill savings have totalled about N1.8 billion in five years. Carbon emissions avoided: an estimated 2,367 tonnes.
It is, by the account of the agency that built it, one of the good outcomes.
It is also, officials now concede, the exception.
When Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency (REA) sent engineers back to inspect the seven university and hospital sites delivered under the first phase of its flagship Energising Education Programme, they found only three in good or usable condition.
