Wiring the Republic | Abba Aliyu

Описание: There are places in Nigeria where people have never had electricity.
Not that "the power goes out sometimes."

Never.

Generations have grown up in permanent darkness the moment the sun sets, had kerosene lamps for light, no refrigerators, no way to charge phones, kids studying under moonlight, and even small businesses that can't operate past 6 p.m.

This is the reality for millions of Nigerians, and Abba Aliyu runs the government agency trying to change it.

As MD/CEO of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), his job is to bring power to communities that traditional grid expansion will never reach. This episode is to understand what it actually takes to electrify Nigeria's last-mile communities, the ones everyone else has given up on.

We discuss what people get wrong about delivering power through government institutions, how REA is shifting from just "providing access" to enabling economic development (because light alone doesn't pay bills), the coordination nightmare of working across ministries, state governments, and private developers who all have different priorities, what approaches are being tested to reach communities traditional models keep missing, and what success looks like in 2030, not in policy documents, but in whether a rural community can finally run a cold storage facility or power a grinding machine.

The conversation also builds on themes from the Nigeria Renewable Energy Innovation Forum (NREIF) 2025, where the big shift was from pilots and announcements to asking: How do we build systems that actually last and create economic value?