Nigeria’s Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, has said the deployment of off-grid solar solutions across educational institutions is helping to improve learning conditions.
The off-grid solutions are being rolled out under the Energising Education Programme, executed by the Rural Electrification Agency.
Speaking during a recent interview on the Afropolitan Podcast, Alausa said unsustainable utility expenditures and persistent national grid failures had historically undermined academic stability, crippled scientific research and lowered the overall standard of campus living.
He explained that delivering a dependable learning environment required taking universities off conventional transmission lines entirely.
According to the minister, transitioning tertiary institutions to dedicated solar mini-grids would protect lecture halls and student accommodations from recurring power outages.
“We are taking our campuses off the national grid with dedicated solar power. You cannot build a modern university system where students cannot read at night, laboratories lose power in the middle of experiments, and hospitals attached to our universities are forced to run on noisy, expensive diesel generators,” he said.
