The Rural Electrification Agency has called for a unified national approach to electricity-access projects after an analysis of federal budgets using artificial intelligence revealed that multiple government institutions were implementing power-related interventions.
REA Managing Director, Dr Abubakar Aliyu, said stronger coordination between federal agencies, state governments, development partners and private operators would help prevent project duplication and ensure limited resources reach communities where electricity is needed most.
Aliyu spoke at the official relaunch of the Off-Grid Stakeholder Coordination and Partnership Forum in Abuja.
He said an AI-assisted analysis of the Federal Government’s 2024 and 2025 budgets showed that several government institutions were executing electricity-related projects. Pasted markdown
Some of the institutions identified were not traditionally regarded as major power-sector agencies.
REA Warns Against Duplication
The discovery highlights the difficulty of coordinating electricity-access programmes spread across different government institutions.
Without adequate information sharing, multiple agencies could potentially target similar communities while other areas remain underserved.
Aliyu argued that bringing state governments into planning discussions was equally important.
“If we continue to work the way we currently do without bringing the states into this conversation and coordination, I can tell you that we will simply be planning to fail,” he said. Pasted markdown
The renewed forum is intended to provide a mechanism for stakeholders to coordinate programmes and partnerships in the off-grid electricity market.
AI Becomes Planning Tool
The use of artificial intelligence to analyse budget documents is also notable.
Rather than deploying AI directly to generate electricity, the agency used the technology as an analytical tool to identify government spending and projects connected to the power sector.
Such applications could help policymakers identify overlapping programmes and map where public resources are being directed.
For Nigeria, improving coordination is particularly important because expanding electricity access requires substantial investment while public resources remain limited.
The REA’s position is that stronger cooperation could help government and development partners extract greater impact from existing expenditure rather than simply creating additional programmes.
