26/08/2026
FG Targets Reliable Power for 30% of Nigeria’s Health Facilities by 2027
The Federal Government has set December 2027 as a deadline to provide reliable electricity to at least 30 per cent of Nigeria’s health facilities, warning that persistent power shortages are threatening critical medical services and driving up healthcare costs.
The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja at the official launch of the Renewable Asset Management Company (RAMCO), established by the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI).
Salako said the urgency of the intervention was underscored by the depth of Nigeria’s healthcare energy crisis, revealing that between 60 and 70 per cent of primary and tertiary health facilities experience frequent power outages or have no electricity at all.
He added that about 40 per cent of functional Primary Health Care Centres (PHCs) have no electricity access, while many facilities that are connected to the grid receive only six to 10 hours of supply daily.
The minister said the situation is even more challenging in teaching hospitals, which require between three and eight megawatts to operate optimally but receive only about five hours of grid electricity daily.
As a result, he said, some hospitals spend between 40 and 50 per cent of their operating expenditure on energy, much of it on diesel-powered generators.
Salako stressed that the cost of unreliable electricity goes far beyond hospital budgets, warning that power failure in healthcare facilities can become a matter of life and death.
“In a hospital, electricity is not an amenity; it is a clinical input. When power fails in a health facility, what is lost is not comfort. It is time, quality of service, and sometimes it is life,” Salako said.
He explained that electricity is indispensable to critical healthcare services, powering vaccine cold chains, oxygen concentrators, operating theatres, diagnostic equipment and incubators for premature babies.
According to him, the Federal Government has begun addressing the challenge through renewable-energy interventions, including the Energizing Education Programme and the Nigeria Electrification Project.
He said federal tertiary health institutions, including teaching hospitals in Maiduguri and Calabar, had benefited from renewable-energy interventions, while 100 health facilities had received 50-kilowatt containerised solar hybrid systems.
Salako disclosed that the second phase of the intervention is targeting another 400 Primary Health Care Centres.
However, he warned that providing renewable-energy infrastructure without a sustainable management system could turn major investments into abandoned projects.
The minister revealed that more than 30 per cent of solar systems installed in Nigerian PHCs become non-functional within three years of commissioning, mainly because of inadequate preventive maintenance, lack of spare parts, insufficient dedicated funding and unclear responsibility for the assets after project completion.
To this end, Salako described RAMCO as a major intervention capable of changing how renewable-energy infrastructure is delivered and maintained in Nigeria.
“RAMCO promises that it converts an installation into a managed asset,” he said.
He explained that RAMCO’s model, build, operate, optimize, aggregate, refinance and reinvest, would move renewable-energy projects away from one-off installations towards professionally managed infrastructure with clear ownership, performance standards, maintenance schedules and sustainable financing.
Salako said the model aligns with the Federal Government’s Nigeria Power-for-Health Initiative, approved by President Bola Tinubu following the National Stakeholders’ Dialogue on Power in the Health Sector in September 2025.
He said the initiative’s central objective is to ensure that at least 30 per cent of Nigeria’s health facilities have reliable electricity by the end of 2027.
He emphasised that recent government implementation plans also envisage public-private partnerships and energy-as-a-service models to accelerate healthcare electrification.
To accelerate delivery, Salako proposed four areas of collaboration between RAMCO and the Power-for-Health Initiative.
These include recognising health facilities as a distinct asset class within RAMCO’s portfolio; linking RAMCO’s professional asset-management system with Facility Energy Management Teams in hospitals; integrating renewable-energy asset records with health-facility energy audits; and directing part of recycled capital towards PHCs.
The minister stressed that PHCs must remain a priority despite their relatively lower commercial attractiveness to investors, noting that reliable power at the primary-care level is critical to maternal and newborn survival.
He also pledged that the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare would give RAMCO a seat on the Inter-Agency Technical Committee of the Nigeria Power-for-Health Initiative.
Salako said the ministry would also pursue dedicated electricity budget lines across healthcare tiers, update facility energy audits, enforce installation and certification standards, including NEMSA certification, and coordinate development-partner and private-sector investments to eliminate duplication.
He stressed that the government alone cannot finance the scale of infrastructure required to deliver reliable electricity across Nigeria’s healthcare system.
The minister therefore called for increased mobilisation of private capital, development finance, climate finance and innovative financing mechanisms to support sustainable healthcare electrification.
According to him, professionally managed renewable-energy assets backed by transparent performance data, predictable maintenance and credible payment structures would be more attractive to long-term investors.
Such a model, he said, would help Nigeria move away from repeatedly seeking funds to replace failed infrastructure and instead preserve existing investments while mobilising fresh capital for expansion.
“We will not reach it by procurement alone. We will reach it by building assets that last, and by managing them as the national infrastructure they are,” Salako said.
He added:
“May RAMCO keep the lights on where they matter most.”
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