The Federal Government has launched the Renewable Asset Management Company, RAMCO, with a target of mobilising about N3 trillion in investment into Nigeria’s renewable energy sector while ensuring the long-term sustainability of publicly funded renewable energy projects.
The Minister of Power, Mr Joseph Tegbe, disclosed this on Wednesday at the stakeholders’ launch of RAMCO in Abuja, saying the initiative would introduce a new approach to managing public infrastructure by moving beyond project construction to sustained asset performance.
Tegbe said RAMCO would bridge the gap between public investment and private capital by creating professionally managed and investible renewable energy assets.
He said the government had historically focused more on constructing infrastructure than maintaining it, leading to the deterioration of valuable public assets and repeated demands for funding to replace facilities that should still be operational.
According to him, RAMCO would bring “professional stewardship, governance discipline, sustainability and measurable performance” to the management of renewable energy assets.
The minister said renewable energy was becoming an increasingly important component of Nigeria’s power strategy, alongside grid electricity, embedded generation, mini-grids, distributed renewable energy and energy storage.
“RAMCO, therefore, provides the opportunity for us to protect what we build, optimise what we already own, and ensure that every naira invested in energy infrastructure produces sustained service,” he said.
Tegbe said the Ministry of Power would support RAMCO as part of broader reforms aimed at improving grid stability, sector liquidity, asset optimisation and the mobilisation of private capital for power infrastructure.
He said the company must preserve asset value, improve uptime and availability, establish transparent performance benchmarks, enforce credible maintenance and replacement regimes and strengthen accountability among operators.
The minister added that RAMCO’s success would not be measured by the number of assets transferred to its portfolio, but by their operational performance, the reliability of electricity supplied, additional investment mobilised and public confidence in the infrastructure.
“We seek infrastructure that does more than exist on the public balance sheet: infrastructure that performs, is diligently maintained, and is professionally managed to deliver sustained value to the Nigerian people,” he said.
N263bn invested in solar projects
Also speaking, the Managing Director of the Rural Electrification Agency, REA, Abba Aliyu, said the Federal Government had invested about N263 billion in solar-hybrid generation under the Energising Education Programme, EEP, covering 22 federal universities and three teaching hospitals.
Aliyu said the projects had deployed 82MW of solar-hybrid generation since 2017, while more than 150MW was either under construction or in the pipeline through initiatives including the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund, Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up, DARES, National Public Sector Solarisation Initiative, subsequent phases of EEP and the Desert to Power programme.
He said another 70 to 80 public institutions could be powered by REA-implemented renewable energy assets within the next three years.
However, Aliyu said an assessment of seven sites delivered under the first phase of EEP showed serious sustainability challenges, with only three found to be in good or usable condition.
He attributed the deterioration of some of the assets to the absence of sustainable maintenance arrangements, reliable revenue mechanisms and clear institutional responsibility for preserving them throughout their economic lives.
According to him, the findings underscored the need for RAMCO as an institutional mechanism for ensuring the sustainability of publicly financed renewable energy assets.
He said RAMCO, incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act, would have Federal Government interests held through the Ministry of Finance Incorporated, MOFI, and would be governed by a professional board.
Its mandate, he said, would include managing publicly financed renewable energy assets, contracting competent operators, metering, billing and revenue collection, maintaining sustainability reserves for major equipment replacement and transparently reporting asset performance.
“If a battery or inverter requires replacement in year eight, we should not return to the Treasury in year eight looking for emergency funding. The money should already be there,” Aliyu said.
He stressed that RAMCO was not designed to extract profit from public institutions or become another avenue for Treasury funding, but to establish a commercially sustainable platform capable of attracting private capital.
Aliyu also called on beneficiary institutions, particularly universities and teaching hospitals, to pay for the electricity they consume as part of the sustainability framework.
He cited Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, where a renewable energy plant commissioned in 2019 serves more than 9,500 staff and students and has generated about N1.8 billion in combined savings from avoided diesel purchases and electricity bills over five years.
The project, he added, had also helped to avoid about 2,367 tonnes of carbon emissions.
“So a sustainability tariff is not simply a new expense. It is the redirection of part of what an institution would otherwise spend on expensive and unreliable power towards preserving the asset providing reliable electricity,” he said.
RAMCO to attract private capital
The REA boss said professionally managed renewable energy assets could eventually be aggregated into portfolios capable of attracting infrastructure investors, banks, pension funds, insurance companies and other institutional investors.
He said the model would create a cycle of building, operating, preserving, generating revenue, reinvesting and building again, thereby reducing dependence on repeated government appropriations.
Aliyu also disclosed that REA had concluded joint-development arrangements with seven Nigerian manufacturers covering solar modules, battery energy storage systems, inverters, street lighting and solar-asset recycling.
He said a professionally managed renewable energy portfolio approaching 200MW could create predictable demand for Nigerian manufacturers, helping to retain foreign exchange and create skilled jobs.
He added that RAMCO would create a competitive market for Nigerian energy service companies by engaging professional operators under clear standards for energy delivery, revenue collection and asset availability.
Beyond renewable generation, Aliyu said REA invested about N135 billion between 2012 and 2024 in grid-extension infrastructure, including 3,766 transformers and about 9,556 kilometres of network.
He said such infrastructure also required a sustainability culture to ensure that public investments continued to deliver value.
Aliyu said REA would, between the launch and the end of November, conclude the valuation and technical assessment of the initial RAMCO asset portfolio, complete the transfer of the assets to the company and onboard long-term operations and maintenance partners for EEP Phase II sites.
The agency, he added, would engage beneficiary institutions, the National Universities Commission, the Ministries of Education and Health, and the Budget Office to establish workable tariff and payment arrangements.
He pledged that progress would be publicly reported, saying transparency would remain central to the management of RAMCO.
Ministers, MOFI back initiative
In separate remarks, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, and the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, commended the REA, Infracorp and MOFI for establishing RAMCO.
Alausa said electricity supply had remained constant in several universities where mini-grids had been installed, but lamented that about 30 per cent of the facilities had been damaged due to poor maintenance.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Infracorp, Dr Lazarus Angbazo, said establishing projects was not enough without mechanisms to guarantee their maintenance and sustainability.
“In simple terms, REA and its partners will continue to help Nigeria to build renewable infrastructure. But RAMCO will help ensure that what we build keeps working and keeps delivering value to Nigeria,” he said.
He urged the government to move from simply building projects to managing assets and creating sustainable infrastructure value.
Similarly, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of MOFI, Dr Armstrong Takang, stressed the need for structures to manage public infrastructure after commissioning.
He said the failure of relatively simple components such as solar panels or batteries could render entire projects unusable if there was no effective maintenance framework.
“Public projects should not end when they are commissioned. Its real life begins on that day,” Aliyu said.
